


Trying To Survive

by LHS3020b



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Dex - Freeform, Gen, Krogan, Krondesh, OCs - Freeform, Turian, omega - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-10 04:08:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 30
Words: 167,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2010381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LHS3020b/pseuds/LHS3020b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dex is a turian with a past he'd rather forget. Plenty of people on Omega have things to hide, and he is no exception. Trying to hang onto his principles, his day-job makes him walk an awkward line between being a bodyguard and being a merc. Then one day, his employer forces him to choose between his conscience and his cashflow. Trying to make the right decision, he finds his life turned upside down.</p><p>Just when things were strange enough already, he meets Krondesh, krogan outcast...</p><p>(Rated as Mature as this fic has the occasional outburst of significant violence.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Price of a Conscience

'You must be mistaken,' Dex said. 'I'm not a mercenary.'  
The asari gang-leader regarded him with a smirk. 'You own a gun and you rent your services out,' she said. 'I think that makes you a merc.'  
Dex's mandibles flexed in irritation. 'I'm a bodyguard,' he said. 'That's something else.'  
Kat - Kataza T'saik, as she was formally-known - snorted. 'A meaningless distinction, birdie.'  
Dex felt a growl building inside him. He managed to choke it back. Kat provoked people deliberately - it was her way of pushing them off-balance, of making them easier to manipulate. He knew what she was doing and he had no desire to co-operate.  
Still, her recent adoption of human terms of abuse for turians was irritating.  
Dex managed to flex his face into a passable smile. 'Only to you, Kat,' he said. She looked annoyed. Apparently Dex had scored a point with that rejoinder. The turian felt a moment of satisfaction. He could have pointed out to her that bodyguards protected people while mercenaries killed people, but Kat wouldn't care about that. It was probably best not to say more; she already regarded him as too much of a naive idealist.  
Something changed in Kat's face. Apparently she recognised that her usual strategies weren't working. 'Well,' she said, 'whatever you may be, you still need credits. And I have something I need doing. Perhaps we can work something out.'  
Dex looked around him. He'd been wondering why she'd called him here. They were stood in the room Kat referred to as her office. It was a converted storage chamber. She'd set up her desk in the clear area in the middle of the room. A terminal sat on top of the desk, holoscreen and haptic fields glowing faintly. The office itself was cramped, festooned with boxes and bags. It was lit by a single lamp-panel in the far corner of the ceiling. The air was warm and humid. There was also a faint odour of decay. In the background Dex could hear all the familiar sounds of Omega, the whir of air pumps, the hum of fans and the ticking and groaning of pipework.  
'Really,' Dex said, trying not to sound too world-weary. He didn't want Kat's work; the woman was a drug dealer and a petty thug. She was stingy, with a volus-like aptitude for penny-pinching. She drove deals hard and her 'jobs' always seemed to have an unfavourable effort-to-reward ratio. Her manner was patronising and she was an abrasive individual, motivated purely by self-interest.  
The unpleasant truth, though, was that she was right: he needed the credits.  
A sly light entered Kat's eyes. 'Also, I might be prepared to offer you something else. If you deign to take this job.'  
Dex felt wary. What was the asari plotting? 'What is this job?' he asked.  
Kat and generosity were not two phenomena that would normally coincide. If she was offering sweeteners, then that meant she was up to something.  
'Come with me,' Kat said. She strode out from behind the desk. She wore a labourer's boots and jumpsuit, complete with appropriate dirt and grease stains. She almost looked like someone who earned an honest and useful living. The key word was 'almost'; the lie was exposed by the very expensive Carnifex pistol she had holstered at her waist. For all of her flaws, no-one could accuse Kat of being stupid. She dressed the way she did to deflect attention. Kat was moderately wealthy, by Omega standards, but flaunting your money was a good way to attract trouble.  
Kat walked over to the door and waved her hand at the plate. The door ground open, the aged servos whining their protest at the load. Dex winced. The sound dug right into his ear-holes.  
He blinked as the brighter light of the corridor outside spilled in.  
'This way,' Kat said.  
She led Dex outside, into the warren of corridors and rooms that was her so-called head offices. Kat's organisation was the third-biggest drug dealership in this district. It was always busy here, with people coming and going on various errands. Omega being the place it was, the dealership was an open, above-ground business; there were posh skycar-style salesrooms up front where customers could sample the wares and make their purchases. There was even a special doping-lounge for the members of the Gold Syringe Club, where wealthy junkies could take their fix surrounded by Thessian potted plants, carpets from Sur'Kesh and walls covered with turian tapestries. The backrooms were seedier, of course. Just like any dealership anywhere, whether legal or otherwise, the most expensive show had to be in the public sales areas.  
The back corridors were noticeably warmer than the main areas. As they walked, Dex tugged at his collar, trying to encourage a little air-movement.  
The employees had to make do with cramped corridors, poor lighting, a pervasive musty smell and the occasional leak. Dex counted three buckets along the corridor as they walked along it. Little droplets of water plip-plip-plipped from several leaky pipes above them. The dealership was not immune to Omega's general air of shabbiness.  
Dex despised the dealership. He was also unhealthily-grateful for the trickle of money that he'd been able to eek out of it on various contracts. He was well aware of the dichotomy in his own feelings. The dissonance was awkward.  
Dex supposed his entire situation was awkward.  
'Here we are,' Kat said, interrupting his musings.  
Up ahead was the armoury. As a contractor rather than an employee, Dex had never been allowed in there. With no formal government and no police force, Omega's businesses had to provide their own security, and Kat's was no exception. For a time she had parcelled out the work to the Blue Suns, until several of their troops had been caught sampling the dealership's wares. After that she'd brought the security in-house.  
The armoury's door looked like something straight out of a bank vault. It consisted of six inches of high-grade composite, backed up by kinetic barriers and military-grade encryption on its electronics. In addition, the checkpoint outside was  
manned by two of Kat's hired guns. Both of them were batarians and both of them were carrying assault rifles. They had their faces contorted into near-comical expressions of supposed ferocity.  
They just looked like they needed the toilet.  
The two batarians brandished their guns - both generic M8 Avengers, Dex noted with professional curiosity. For a bottom-end rifle the M8 wasn't bad, Dex supposed, but it wasn't a gun he'd waste his time on. It didn't appear that either of the batarians had modded their weapons in any way. He wasn't surprised. This was more of Kat's penny-pinching. She was too cheap to hire actual professionals. In a way, Dex was glad of that - if Kat were to make him a permanent job offer, it would be difficult to say yes but also difficult to say no. As things stood, at least he would never need to face that particular dilemma.  
'Oh, hi, boss,' the leader of the guards said as they belatedly-recognised their employer.  
Dex had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. Back in his army days, if one of his fellow soldiers had taken that long to recognise and salute an officer, the man would have been up on a charge.  
'Narak,' she said. 'I need access to the armoury.'  
'Of course, boss. Uh, and the bird?'  
That word again.  
'He's with me,' Kat said.  
The batarian leader nodded. He touched a glowing keypad on the door. With a grinding whir, the metal portal grated open. Kat sauntered through. A glance from her granted Dex permission to follow.  
As he walked in, he met the batarian's eyes and Dex parted his mandibles, bearing his teeth in a soundless snarl. While he had little choice but to accept the put-downs from Kat, by the spirits he would not take them from this lowlife!  
The results were satisfactory. The batarian cringed and took a step backward.  
Smiling to himself, Dex entered the armoury proper.  
Once they were inside, the door grated shut behind them.  
The armoury was cooler than the muggy heat of the corridor. The air was fresher and dry, carrying a faint smell of metal and oils. Inside the thick bunker-walls it was quieter. The only sounds were the faint hum of electronics, the gentle whir of the omnipresent air-fans and the clicking of their boot-soles as Kat and the turian walked across the deck-plating on the floor.  
The armoury was well-lit, better than anywhere in the employees' section of the dealership. Racks of guns were lined up along the walls and there were cabinets containing medigel, thermal clips and all the other accessories of destruction that any profitable Omegan business needed to protect itself. Kat moved through the room like a queen, pausing to stroke one of the cabinets. There was a faint smile on her face. Dex realised he'd never seen her like this. Surrounded by instruments of violence, she almost seemed happy.  
'I built this business up from nothing, you know,' she said, almost to herself.  
'You keep the junkies of Gozu happily doped-up,' Dex noted. He tried and failed to keep the disapproval out of his voice.  
Kat heard it and shot him an acid glare. 'And your scruples don't stop you taking my money, do they, bird?' She all-but-spat the epithet.  
She'd noticed how the insult had affected him, he realised.  
Dex sighed, and just nodded. 'You keep offering it,' he said, feeling dirty.  
'You're a judgemental jerk,' Kat noted, 'and you clearly think you're too good for Omega.' She sighed. 'But the fact is, you also are a good shooter. I haven't lost a single one of the dealers you've escorted. And you've been freelancing with us for the last half-orbit. Before that we were losing two per cycle.'  
"Losing" here meant "killed". Cut-throat competition on Omega was exactly that. Kat was keen to grow her market share - she was certainly ambitious, Dex would give her that - but the two bigger dealerships in Gozu were keen to see the upstart kept down. It wasn't quite a full-blown gang war, as that much destruction would probably result in Aria T'Loak's organisation taking an interest, and no-one wanted to be squashed by Aria. However, there was certainly plenty of low-level violence. It was why Kat was willing to spend so much money on the armoury, despite her otherwise-rigorous commitment to cost-cutting.  
'So you keep offering me money,' Dex said, 'despite the fact you don't like me.'  
Kat shrugged. 'Yes. And we get to the crux of it. I have something you can do. I'll pay you for it, of course. Usual rates.'  
'You wouldn't bring me here if it wasn't something special,' Dex said.  
'No,' she agreed. 'Talking of special, look here.' Her omnitool flickered into life around her wrist. She waved it at one of the cabinets. With a soft, well-oiled whir, the front of the cabinet slid up. Dex blinked. It wasn't a cabinet; it was a safe!  
'And here it is,' Kat said. Her face was sly.  
Dex looked. Inside the cabinet was a sniper rifle, held upright by a set of restraint-clips. 'No way...' he said, feeling astonished. 'How did you - where - actually, wait, forget I even said that. You wouldn't tell me even if you wanted to, would you?'  
'Have I got your attention?' Kat asked.  
She had, Dex acknowledged. The contents of the cabinet had added an unexpected new variable to his arithmetic of reluctance.  
The sniper rifle was a Black Widow.  
Dex hoped he wasn't drooling - or at least, not drooling too visibly. 'That must have cost you serious money,' he said.  
Kat shrugged. She didn't speak.  
A Black Widow. Dex had never actually seen one before. He'd heard of these guns, though. High damage. Accurate. Capable of punching through armour even at substantial distances. And actually, for what it was, relatively light. The Black Widow variant even had multiple shots per thermal clip, although those shots didn't do quite as much damage individually as the 'normal' Widow.  
If there was one thing Dex appreciated, it was a good gun, and he was looking at one.  
'Actually,' Kat said, 'I suppose I can tell you. You see, believe it or not, this may even be legal salvage.'  
Dex blinked, his mandibles flexing. 'How does that work?'  
'This one was part of a consignment of weapons,' Kat said. 'It was sent to one of those little wildcat human colonies in the Terminus Systems. It would've been used for colonial defence. I gather the Alliance doesn't formally-acknowledge the unrecognised colonies, but there's some back-channel support.' She shrugged. Governments were governments; hypocrisy was to be expected. 'Only, thing is, the colonists vanished about four weeks ago.'  
'Slaver attack?' Dex asked.  
Kat thought about it, then shook her head. 'Doubtful. The colony buildings were left intact. Personal possessions were left behind. Apparently there were even meals left on the tables. And active credit chits, left lying out in the open.'  
That was definitely not the work of slavers, then. Another idea crossed Dex's mind. 'Insurance fraud?' he suggested.  
Kat nodded. 'That's my guess too,' she said. 'A dodgy bank, setting up fake colonies to launder money. Set up your own wildcat settlement, unofficial so it's not regulated by Earth or the Council. Put it in a dangerous bit of space, so you can justify insuring it for a lot of money. Then have everyone mysteriously vanish, leaving no evidence. Put your hands in the area and say "Oh what a tragedy! Now can we have our insurance money, please?" '  
'File the credits, retire to a tropical paradise,' Dex agreed. He didn't like Kat, but when it came to matters of commercial decisions and raw greed, he reckoned her analysis would be spot-on.  
'I assume the colonists were paid actors or something,' Kat said. 'To be honest, I don't really care. Anyway, apparently they rolled the Alliance as well, and got shipped these guns. They were left lying around after everyone disappeared.'  
'But why?' Dex asked. 'A Black Widow must be worth...' He shook his head. He didn't know. Hundreds of thousands of credits, as minimum!  
'My guess is, guns like these are too hot,' Kat said. 'If they start appearing in large numbers on the private market, people are going to get suspicious. Leaving the guns behind doesn't cost the fraudsters anything, you see, and it makes the fraud a bit more believable. Anyway, one of the Gold Syringe Club junkies was involved in the looting of the abandoned colony. He picked these up while he was there. And he was getting behind on his Red Sand payments.'  
'He offered you that instead,' Dex guessed. Poor choice.  
Kat nodded. 'Yes. He's a businessman, not a merc, so I guess he didn't know what he had.' She smirked. 'I told him it paid for half his debt. He's still paying me the rest.'  
Dex boggled at her audacity. Somewhere behind them, an air fan was whirring a little out of sync with the others in the room. The slight counterpoint was grating on his nerves.  
'You scammed your own customer,' he said. 'That's wrong.'  
Kat shrugged. 'You look down on junkies. Why would you care?'  
'I -' Dex tried to answer her, then came to a confused stop. Feeling a bit lame, he said, 'Just because I don't like people doesn't mean I screw them over.'  
Kat snorted. Her disdain was obvious.  
'Anyway,' Dex said, 'I assume you want more than just showing off your new gun?'  
Kat tapped her foot on the floor. The sound echoed in the enclosed space. She said, 'There's something I want done. Do it for me and you get this gun. As well as the credits.'  
Dex stared. 'You - what?' He was reduced to complete incomprehension for a moment.  
Kat was offering him the Widow? This was for real? The queen of asari penny-pinching, offering him a freebie?  
He realised his mandibles were twitching. Overhead the unsynchronised fan was still groaning gently in its vent. He breathed deeply, inhaling the faint scent of metal and cleaning-oils that filled the room.  
Kat rolled her eyes, sighing theatrically. 'Do what I ask, get paid and get a shiny new sniper rifle. That Mantis of yours is looking a bit tired. You could do with a replacement. Might as well be something better.'  
He stared at the gun. Him - owning a Widow? Was this really possible?  
‘I know you could make good use of it,’ Kat said. ‘You do know your way around sniper rifles. Like that thing you said, the other day. About the time you recognised the HMWSG, just by the sound. You know, the one they used on T’Loak ages ago.’  
About six months ago, someone had tried a hit on Aria T’Loak. It had failed, of course. Dex had been nearby, as part of Kat’s bodyguard. It had been his first day working for her, in fact. She’d been going to Afterlife for a meeting when the entire station had been pitched into turmoil. For a first job, it had been quite the experience. He’d stayed by his employer’s side during the disturbances and had got her back to the head office safely. It had apparently impressed Kat enough that she’d offered him subsequent jobs.  
The reminiscence passed through his mind in a flash. He was still staring at the gun. This was something even better than a HMWSG. There had to be a catch. Dex's eyes narrowed. 'You want someone murdered, don't you.'  
'No,' Kat said, 'I want an inconvenience removed.'  
Ah-ha. So she did want someone killed. 'I'll remind you,' Dex said, picking his words carefully, 'that I don't kill people, except in defence.'  
'This is Omega,' Kat said. 'Honestly, I don't think you understand how things work here.'  
Her grandstanding was irritating. For a moment Dex was tempted to point out that she didn't need to preface her sneers - she wasn't an elcor!  
'No,' Dex said. 'I understand Omega well enough. I’ve been here long enough. That doesn't mean I have to be complicit in it all.'  
'Think carefully,' Kat said. Her tone was cooler and something predatory lurked behind her eyes. 'I've been quite a generous employer for you.'  
Dex shrugged. 'You need my skills.'  
'You're good in a fight,' she conceded. 'I'll allow that much. In fact, I'd say you're suspiciously good in a fight. I have my doubts about your claimed principles. It's pretty obvious you weren't always just Dex Of-No-Known-Gens.'  
Dex stiffened, both with anger and with a twinge of fear. If Kat knew about his past-  
She shrugged. 'I can't prove my suspicions. To be honest, I don't care about what you've done before. You've been useful, so I've indulged your little quirks. But you might find other employers less generous. If you have to choose between your precious principles and regular dinners, I wonder what will happen?'  
She was threatening him. He was a contractor, not an employee - of course he had no legal rights as Omega had no laws, but he had no actual status within her organisation either. She could get rid of him any time she liked.  
Living on Omega was bad. Being unemployed on Omega was downright dangerous. No laws, no rights, no protection ... unless you found another job quickly, starvation was a real risk. Or possibly worse. There was always a brisk trade at the batarians’ markets, and sometimes desperate people had been known to hand themselves over if the alternative was starvation.  
Dex shuddered. The room felt colder all of a sudden.  
She said, 'Future employers would probably ask my views before hiring you. If you think you're too good for my jobs, I'll have to tell them the truth. You may have trouble finding other positions.'  
She really was threatening him. And she was right to. In a real sense, the only freedom most people within Omega had was the freedom to be afraid. Even the successful and powerful were never more than one botched mugging away from personal disaster. The situation for the majority was worse.  
'If I accept this offer of yours,' Dex said, 'there'll be other "offers" in time, no doubt.'  
Kat said nothing, but her expressionless face was all the answer he needed.  
'You're right that I have a past,' he told her, 'and I've told people much bigger and much more powerful than you to fuck off. You can keep your gun. Goodbye, Kat. I'll show myself out.'  
He turned around and walked toward the door. Kat stared after him, jaw open. Dex felt a small amount of satisfaction from that. Principles had their price, but so did compliance. Dex had learned that lesson the hard way a long time ago. Some mistakes you don’t make twice.  
‘What?’ she sputtered. ‘You don’t even want to know what the target is?’  
There was one other thing he knew; Kat was not as powerful as she thought she was.  
‘No, Kat,’ he said as he stood by the door, ‘I don’t. And I’m not going to waste any more time on your nonsense.’  
The door grated open again. Dex strode out, ignoring the batarian guards. he was going to have to move fast, but he was nothing if not resourceful. He’d had to start again from nothing once before. In some ways that had been worse.  
He could do it again. There would be a way. And at least he would be free of Kat’s murderous scheming.


	2. A Mugging and a Finch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following his disastrous meeting with Kat, Dex explores his options.

Dex was awoken by a call.  
He'd left his omnitool on the table. It was vibrating with its shill ring-tone, filling the small space of his apartment. Groggy and reluctant, he sat up, blinking.  
The table was right next to the bed. The apartment was too small for it to be much further away; the main room was the largest of the three, and even that was cramped.  
Dex reached for the omnitool, missing with his first groggy hand-wave. On his second he managed to clutch it and drag it over. Pulling the sheet up over his torso, he thumbed it on.  
'Yes?' he asked.  
To his surprise, it was Kat. She noted his half-dressed state with a raised eyebrow, but she didn't comment on it. 'Dex,' she said. 'Good; you answered.'  
'Kat.' Dex blinked, mandibles flexing. 'This is unexpected.'  
'Probably.' She seemed distracted. There were dark bags under her eyes. After a pause, she said, 'I've been thinking.'  
'Oh.' Well, that would be a first.  
'About yesterday,' Kat said. She rubbed at her face with a hand.  
Of course. Dex recalled yesterday. The armoury, the Widow and the dubious job offer. Dex's mandibles moved in, then out. He sighed. 'So you've rung me up to taunt me. Thanks but no thanks, Kat.' He reached out to end the call.  
'No,' Kat said with asperity. 'Actually I rang to apologise.'   
Dex froze in mid-movement. Kat had just said what?  
She said, 'Thinking about it, I can see why you reacted like you did. There were some details I didn't communicate yesterday.' She looked like she was about to eat something unpleasant; a grimace rippled across her face. 'Evidently that was my mistake.'  
This was surreal. Kat apologising and admitting to error?  
'If you had the full context,' she said, 'I suspect you'd find the contract I'm offering a lot less objectionable.'  
Dex stared. After a moment of trying to process her statement, he said, 'So what is this context, then?'  
'I can't talk about it on an open line,' Kat said. 'I'll need you to come in. I've got a free slot at twelve hundred hours. See me then.'  
With that, she rang off.  
Dex stared at the omnitool. Spirits - what had all that been about? He shook his head, trying to dismiss the oddness.  
The next hour or so proceeded as normal.   
He made use of the bathroom, then checked his messages and ate some breakfast. He stopped at the mirror to check that he still had the right colony paint - not his correct colony, of course. Never his correct colony. On one occasion, just after reaching Omega, he’d almost been recognised due to that mistake.  
Some mistakes you don’t make twice.  
As he checked the whorls and lines in the mirror, it occurred to him that Kat hadn't told him that he still had work from her. In fact she hadn't really told him anything. Best to proceed on the assumption that he was still unemployed.  
He was going to have to take action.  
A quick browse of the extranet turned up no useful publicly-listed vacancies. The ones he saw all demanded long chains of references and testimonials. The last thing he needed was a new employer talking to Kat. He was going to have to take a more informal approach.  
Dex was going to have to go and find the Finch.  
He went to his console and entered a code.  
'Hello,' a familiar synthetic voice said. 'You are through to Adele. How may I help?'  
Dex cursed under his breath. Adele was the Finch's VI assistant.  
'Hello Adele,' he said. 'Where can I find the Finch today?'  
The VI delivered bad news in its cheery and enthusiastic falsetto tones. 'She is currently at the Bow and Arrow Club. I can confirm that she has openings.'  
'Is she taking calls right now?' The Finch usually refused to do business over the comm-lines, but maybe...  
'I'm sorry,' Adele said, sounding about as sincere as a batarian sentient rights activist, 'but the Finch has set strict instructions today. In-person business only.'  
Dex cursed. The Finch seemed to like questionable hangouts, and she'd picked a brilliant one today. The Bow and Arrow was the most violent club in the district, and it was also located right in the middle of the single most dangerous part of the district.   
Even Aria's people only went to the Lower Warrens in groups.  
'Thank you,' Dex told the VI. 'If you could notify her to expect me at some point, that would be helpful.'  
'Of course. I shall do so.' Before Adele's mindless software could witter any more annoying platitudes, Dex ended the call.  
The Bow and Arrow. The Lower Warrens. Gozu's sordid backside. Wonderful.  
Dex sighed. Before he ventured out from the apartment, he was going to have to   
make sure he was fully-prepared.  
Unless you were lucky enough to be part of Aria's inner circle, nowhere on Omega could really be described as safe. Some parts of it were far worse than others, though.   
The Lower Warrens was a section right at the bottom of the large habitation-cylinder within which the Gozu district was enclosed. All of the connecting routes to other districts were above the Warrens. Even the electricity and water supply in the Warrens was somewhat unreliable. No-one lived in the Warrens if they had any choice in the matter. All sorts of rumours circulated about what went on in the Warrens, from boring and ordinary stuff like muggings and murders to chilling tales of Collector slavers and cannibalism.  
Feeling mordant, it occurred to Dex that if he stayed unemployed, he could end up down there too.  
Casual visitors to the Lower Warrens had an awkward tendency not to return. Dex had no interest in becoming another statistic. If he had to go down there, he would be anything but casual.  
He found himself staring at one of the three doors in the room.  
The big door on the forewall led outside, to the public corridor beyond. That was locked and closed. The second door led through to the small bathing room. Behind there was just a shower unit, a sink and a toilet. The main room, where he was, contained the bed, one table, one chair, a small kitchen area and his extranet console.  
Then there was the remaining door.  
In theory, this apartment was a one-bedroom property. The bedroom would have been exactly that and only that - the room behind the third door had just enough space for a bed and a single small cabinet, and nothing else. Still, by Omegan standards, you could validly consider yourself fortunate if you weren't living on the street. Having an extra room was just icing on the financial-privilege cake.  
Dex had never used it as a bedroom.  
He walked over and thumbed the keypad by the door. He'd added the extra lock here himself. It was coded to his biometrics. Unlike the doors at Kat's HQ, this one was well-maintained and well-oiled. It slid open in smooth silence.  
Dex stepped into his private armoury. The door shut behind him.  
The armoury was a calm, brightly-lit, well-organised space. Twelve years in the turian military had taught Dex a healthy respect for the tools of his trade. Entering this room did feel like an escape from the corrupt chaos outside. At least in here, he was in control. The room was quiet. The only source of noise was a single ceiling fan, gently whirring as it brought fresh air in from the ducts above. The air was scented with gun-oils and the metallic smell of warm thermal clips.  
One wall bore Dex's weapons rack. The wall directly opposite the door had his   
workbench. The wall on the far side had the lockers, both the big one where he kept his armour and the sets of drawers in which he kept his tools, spare thermal clips, barrel mods, scopes and all the other miscellaneous items.  
The first priority was choosing an appropriate gun. Kat might think him an idealist but Dex wasn't naive enough to go out onto the streets of Omega unarmed. However, he wasn't expecting serious troubling, and there were subtle dangers in over-arming yourself. If you went out with a too-obviously-expensive weapon, someone might just decide it was worth the risk of relieving you of it. And Omega could legitimately claim to host the galaxy's best muggers.  
Dex looked at his weapon rack and pondered.  
Currently it had four guns on it. There was his Mantis - sadly, Kat was right. The sniper rifle did look old. One of its mod-slots was vacant after the secondary thermal clip had unexpectedly sprung a leak. Unfortunately it had leaked some hot, molten sodium onto the mod-port, and that had damaged some of the electronics in there. In its present state the port was unusable, and needed wholly-replacing. He still hadn't found a suitable alternative. There was a question mark over whether it would actually be cheaper and better just to stump up the credits for a wholly-new rifle.  
Dex couldn't help himself; he was picturing the Widow up there on the rack, in place of the Mantis.  
Next to the mantis was Dex's assault rifle. He was currently running with a Phaeston - the traditional turian infantryman's gun. It was one he knew well and had plenty of experience with, both on the range and even in actual firefights. The Phaeston had a lot to say for it. A bit more punch than an M8, a very decent fire rate, reasonable accuracy and it was quite light too. Dex had sometimes considered getting something a bit more advanced, but for now the Phaeston met his needs well enough. Next to the Phaeston he also had a generic M8, like the guards at the armoury. The M8 was his backup rifle, just in case something happened to the other one.  
Next up was an empty slot; the rack was designed to take a shotgun as well, but Dex had never got on well with shotguns. He'd taken the mandatory courses in Basic, but that was the limit of his experience with them.  
Lastly there was the pistol. It was a Phalanx, so nothing flashy or fancy. It was clipped in place there, at the end of the rack.  
After some thought, Dex selected the pistol. It wasn't his favourite gun, but it was reasonably light and with the thermal clip mods he'd applied to it, it could put out a surprising number of shots. But, Phalanxes were fairly common, so it was unlikely that anyone would bother to mug him just for this gun. He’d also modified it with an extended barrel. The extra damage that set up was worth having.  
Dex picked the gun up from the rack and turned it over in his hands, feeling amused. Supposedly the M-5 Phalanx was intended solely for the Systems Alliance military. However, the pattern had quickly turned up in Omega’s public networks, and now half the weapons-fan shops in the district stocked Phalanxes. Wasn’t it strange how the military never seemed to see that one coming? Of course, the turian military had experienced many of the same issues, as Dex could well recall.  
He ran a thumb along the gun’s side. His mandibles moved in thought.  
Dex was confident that he could see off a mugger in a fight, if he had to, but one thing his military training had beaten into him was that violence was unpredictable. With luck, a weaker opponent could take out a stronger one. He only needed the one accident to find himself in trouble.  
He took the pistol to the weapons bench and pulled over the work-lamp. Under the clear white light he checked the gun over, making sure there were no signs of damage and that all the mods were installed correctly. It was a fairly standard set, an extension to the thermal clip capacity and an extended barrel. More shots, some extra damage. It seemed a sensible combination.  
Dex ran a couple of testing-instruments over the gun. He interrogated the specialised VI systems within it. The thermal clip reported normal behaviour. No sign of thermal instability, no risk of heat-overload or any other such failure mode. He checked the internal mass accelerator; that was all in working order. The gun was fully powered up. There was no risk of it browning out on him at the wrong moment. Dex winced in sudden recollection of the time that had happened during Basic; Sgt. Viridios had made sure the younger Dex had never forgotten that mistake.  
Dex was satisfied that the gun was ready. Now it was time to get changed.  
He opened the big locker.  
This was the armour locker. It currently contained one suit. This was a turian-sized Predator suit, of heavy armour-class. It was the single most expensive thing Dex currently owned. The only reason he had it at all was because the murderous merc who'd owned it before didn't need it any longer. The mad idiot had thought he didn't need the helmet; Dex's sniper rifle had disagreed.  
In theory, the armour would suffer the same problem as an overly-good gun. However, mugging someone in full armour wasn't a great proposition. Most muggers would pick weaker prey. In addition, after he'd finished cleaning the merc's mortal remains off of it, the next thing Dex had done was get the suit spray-painted matt black. The make wasn't that obvious, and the new colours blended in better in Omega's shadowy corridors.  
It occurred to him that selling this suit could probably pay his bills for as much as five months. However, that would be quite the act of desperation. Dex didn't expect to ever have another chance at acquiring a Predator suit again. He would prefer not to sell unless there really was no other choice.  
He started getting changed.  
By now this was a familiar ritual. Off with the usual clothes. He dumped them in an untidy heap on the floor - they could be dealt with later. Then it was on with the undersuit. Pull it past all the awkward bends, at the ankles and knees and elbows, and over the leg-spurs. Smooth it out so it wasn’t bunched and folded in difficult places. Check all the seals and the padding. Start strapping on the various plates. Make sure the buckles were firmly-secured. Check the connector-cables and the power levels. Put on the helmet. Make sure the breathing mask was functioning properly. Give the kinetic barriers a quick once-over - good, everything was as it should be.  
Satisfied that everything was correct, he set the visor to transparent - he was happy for people to see his face, as long as look was all they did.  
The last step took Dex back to the main room. He had to collect his omnitool and install it in the correct slot in his suit. The tool was keyed to respond to certain hand-gestures. Dex had several useful functions quick-linked in that manner. If he got into a firefight, the last thing he wanted to have to do was fiddle around with a keyboard and a screen.  
Lastly, Dex picked up the pistol and put it in the holster at his side. And then Dex felt ready to leave the apartment.

* * *

The trip down to the Lower Warrens proved every bit as exciting as Dex had expected. Transportation on Omega was always something of a problem. Corridors could be blocked, skycars stolen, tube-trains broke down and elevators got stuck. It was largely down to chance if things got fixed or not. Repairs were entirely in the hands of whoever happened to control a given area at a given time. Aria's organisation maintained a loose network of key arteries, but that was for their own convenience, and they charged high tolls for anyone else.  
And that was the situation in the more-or-less civilised areas.  
In the Lower Warrens, there was essentially no such thing as public transportation. The tube-train tunnels were silent and the elevators stopped a level above the Warrens. Many of the access-corridors had been deliberately blocked off by the people who lived nearby. The only ways in and out were on foot, climbing down ladders and walking along dirty, rusty tunnels.  
Dex found himself walking along the inside of a large and poorly-lit metal tube. From the secondary tubes going off to the sides, he suspected it might once have been a main sewer pipe. There was still a stream of dirty water hissing along the bottom. Try as he might to stay out of it, his boots kept splashing in it. Dex found himself glad of his helmet. Although the rebreather-mask was pushed awkwardly up against his face - not the best of fits there - the weak smell of rubber and metal that it supplied had to be far better than the outside. Just the faintest hint of the outer air's odour managed to seep past the filters.  
It appeared that the tunnel stank. And that stink was as bad as one might expect.  
Something squeaked and chittered. Dex looked down. An Earth rodent was looking back at him. One of those long, bare tails lashed out behind it. Dex frowned. What were they called again? Ah yes, rats! Were they predators or prey? Dex had no idea. Given that this was Omega, it was reasonable to assume the worst.  
'Get lost, rat,' he told it. ‘You don’t want to eat me. I have the wrong proteins. You’d just get the squits.’  
Did rats get the squits? Dex had no idea. The rat, a big, fat black specimen, wriggled its whiskers at him. It chittered again. Then, entirely unconcerned by the well-armed turian, it turned around and scuttled off.  
'Spirits-damned things,' Dex muttered.  
He looked at the tunnel wall. Some helpful soul had painted crude arrows along it, pointing the direction. The white paint was stained and encrusted with dirt, but Dex could see the direction he needed to go.  
Beneath it, some wit had added in splotchy red paint:  
TURN ROUND NOW. SERIOUSLY. IT’S NOT WORTH IT! GO HOME.  
‘Probably good advice,’ Dex muttered. Still, there was no help for it. He squared his shoulders and kept walking.  
A few more minutes' awkward splashing along the corridor brought him to the next intersection. A hole had been cut in the tunnel wall. The edges were ragged - the cutter had apparently been more enthusiastic than skilled. Yellowy-orange light spilled in from the region outside. With a sigh of relief, Dex stepped through.  
Into an ambush.  
'Stop moving, bird!' a voice barked.  
Dex blinked. Then, inside his helmet, he cursed. He hadn't been paying attention. He had his omnitool; he should have put a drone through first!  
His training took over. Observe, orient, decide, act.  
He was stood in what looked like an old pumping station. The pipe-cum-corridor was behind him. The area around him was full of rusty machinery. He could see big pipes, little pipes, valves, gaping sockets and lots of dials. The floor was plain metal decking, dirty and stained with fluid-leaks.  
In front of him were three armed people. Dirty with tattered clothes. Hostile, angry faces. Clutched hands. Guns.   
Muggers.  
Dex’s chest tightened and his breathing sped up.  
All three were human, young and badly-fed. The closest mugger couldn't be more than fourteen. He was barefoot, wearing a tatty shorts and a filthy T-shirt. There were ribs visible under the holes. He was clutching at a bottom-end Kessler pistol.  
Dex felt a moment of contempt. Amateurs! That pistol wouldn't even dent his kinetic barriers.  
'Who are you?' Dex asked.  
The next mugger spoke. This one was an older female. She looked better-fed and had a pair of shoes. She was carrying a worn-looking M8. No mods, Dex noted. Her relative prosperity identified her as the ringleader.  
'We're the Waypoint Gang, birdie,' she said. 'And you're on our territory.'  
'Yeah,' put in the third and final Waypointer. He was a thin brown-haired teenager with heavy facial scarring and an unhealthy, vacant look in his eyes. No, his eye. One of the two was white and sightless. He also had a Kessler pistol. He was wearing what was left of a dock-worker's jumpsuit. 'That means you pay us a toll.'  
'Or what?' Dex asked. He wanted to see if he could negotiate his way out of here. No need for violence unless it was absolutely necessary.  
The woman lifted the M8. 'Stupid bird. What do you think?' Then she made a mistake: she pulled the trigger.  
Dex dropped into a roll. He kicked himself to the side. He was moving even before the first shots left the gun. He'd seen her trigger finger move.  
He hit the ground. The impact thumped his side. But the shock-padding in his suit absorbed most of the force.. Dex rolled himself a little further.  
He took cover behind a fat, vertical pipe.  
Shots rang out in the enclosed of the room. Sparks flew from the pipe-metal above Dex’s head. Several hit the sewer-cylinder behind him. It clanged and shuddered. Fresh cracks radiated across the rusty metal.  
‘FUCKING BIRD!’ the woman shouted. ‘COME OUT DAMN YOU!’  
It appeared they weren’t amenable to a peaceful solution. Mentally, Dex shrugged. Oh well.  
He tugged the Phalanx from its holster. A thumb-swipe over the sensor activated it. With a beep the gun unfolded. Dex closed his hand over the grip, like he’d been trained to. Close your hand to the point where it hurts, then hold it just that little bit less tight.  
He ducked out from behind the pipe. The muggers were stood there. Damn amateurs. He squeezed off two shots -  
BRZZT!  
A flash filled his vision. He felt a shock of force. It slammed into him. Pain flared. Dex staggered back, behind the pipe.  
He’d taken a shot. He glanced down. No - his shoulder was still there, intact. A glance at the readouts on his HUD confirmed it. The kinetic barriers had held. They’d spread the force across his entire torso. That was the thunderclap he’d felt.  
He’d have some bruises, but he’d live. Once more he thanked the spirits for sending that mad helmet-loathing merc his way eighteen months ago.  
Dex realised he was pinned down, behind this pipe. The muggers would get their wits together soon, even as limited as those wits might be. There was one of him and three of them. Not good odds, even if he did have better equipment and training.  
He needed to level the playing-field.  
If Dex had been an ordinary grunt in his past life, this would have posed some problems. But after his induction at fifteen, the turian military had noticed his aptitude for engineering. He’d been cross-trained as a saboteur as well as an infantryman. He had some definite advantages that his opponents didn’t.  
He moved his fingers.  
The omnitool interface blazed to life along Dex’s spare arm. He tapped a few well-practiced keystrokes. Overhead, some more shots flashed around the pipe, striking more sparks from the scenery.  
Breathing hard and fast, Dex hit the ‘activate’ key. Several pieces of code sprang into life. The omnitool began a scan of the local wireless airwaves.  
‘Come out, birdie,’ he heard the woman taunt. ‘We just want your credits!’  
‘And your fancy gun!’ one of the males shouted.  
With a guttural laugh, the other male added, ‘And your pants!’ They all guffawed at that.  
Dex wasn’t stupid. He knew they had no intention of letting a witness live. If he walked away from this, he might warn off potential prey. And apparently this lot were hungry enough and desperate enough to go after difficult prey like himself.  
Taking a momentary risk, he gripped the pistol between his knees. With his freed hand, he reached into one of the side-pouches on his belt. Stored in there were two homing grenades. He thumbed a little panel on the top of it. The grenade’s miniature eezo-driven motors thrummed into life.  
Dex threw it around the pipe.  
As he grabbed his pistol back into his hand, the grenade’s VI noticed the attackers. The eezo motors took over. With a buzz, it turned a right-angle bend in mid-air.  
Dex heard, ‘OH SHIT-’  
Light flashed. There was a bang. The floor shook. Something wet and meaty splashed across the ground to his left. Dex felt a surge of violent satisfaction. One down!  
‘Al!’ It was the youngest male. ‘No!’ The kid sounded distraught.  
‘Shut up, you little shit!’ It was the woman. ‘Grenades! Get into cover!’  
Dex’s omnitool beeped. He looked at it. The results of the scan were outlines on the holoscreen. As he’d thought - UNSECURED CONNECTIONS DETECTED, it said. All modern technology used networked VI systems to some extent. That included guns. If the connections were poorly-encrypted, or not encrypted at all, then hacking them was quite possible.  
His opponents’ guns had unsecured networking.  
Inside his helmet, Dex grinned a savage grin. He liked this part.  
Two more key-taps and he was ready. He ducked out from behind the pipe once more. But instead of shooting, he pointed his omnitool at the other side of the room. A tightening of one of his fingers to activate it, and the omnitool transmitted a squirt of data. Two sets of thermal clips were about to have their firmware scrambled into uselessness.  
Dex ducked back into cover. A volley of shots flew through the space he’d just occupied. More sparks flew. The bangs and cracks of the shots echoed in the tight space of the room. Dex shifted into a crouch, bracing his booted feet against the floor.  
Then there was a new sound. A hiss.  
‘What the f-’ began the remaining male voice.  
Then there was a scream.  
Dex rolled out from cover. He brought his pistol up and fired. The woman was stood there, out in the open, eyes agape. She was holding her M8 at arm’s length. A plume of superheated sodium was spraying out from its side. It was already on fire. She had burns all down one arm.  
She saw him. ‘Fuck you, bird!’ She dropped the sabotaged gun. With her unburned hand, she reached down and pulled a knife out from her belt.  
On the other side of the room, another sodium-flare lit up. The other mugger’s pistol had just blown out too. Dex fired off a couple of shots in that direction. The young mugger dived to the floor, a panicked look in his eyes.  
Dex rolled to his feet. The woman lunged at him with her knife. Triumph was in her eyes. Light glinted on the blade.  
Dex stepped forward. She blinked in confusion. He ducked under her arm and pivoted on one foot, turning around. He cracked her over the back of her head with his Phalanx.  
Something went crunch. She dropped to the floor. Her eyes rolled back in her head. Her body flopped bonelessly on the ground. A trickle of blood dribbled out from behind her hair.  
It was red, Dex noted. Weird. Humans had strange internal arrangements.  
He prodded her with his foot. No response was elicited.  
‘Obviously hit her too hard,’ he muttered. ‘Oh well. Never mind.’  
One left to deal with.  
He turned around. The remaining human was on his knees on the other side of the room. The kid’s face had an expression of sickened terror. Dex noted that the kid had already vomited.  
The turian poked at his omnitool. It released a small guard-drone, fabricated up from some stored materials. Dex dropped the drone off to one side. It was only good for a few minutes’ use, of course, but it would keep watch in case this lot had any friends nearby. In the meantime, there was something he needed to sort out.  
Dex walked over to the kid.  
The kid grabbed the dead pistol on the ground next to him. He tried to shoot. His trigger finger spasmed uselessly on the little metal lever. The gun did nothing.  
Dex reached down. His fingers closed on the dead pistol. With a jerk, he yanked it from the kid’s clutching fist. The turian threw it away, not even bothering to look where it landed.  
The kid started crying.  
Dex sighed. The kid had no other weapons. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in some time. The turian clicked the activation switch on his Phalanx. The gun beeped as it shut down and folded itself up. He shoved it back into his holster.  
The kid stared, cheeks wet and pupils wet.  
Dex reached under the kid’s shoulder and pulled him to his feet. ‘Get up,’ the turian said.  
‘Wh - what? Are - are you going to kill me?’  
Dex sighed. ‘No. Not unless you’re dumb enough to give me any more trouble.’  
Looking pathetically grateful, the kid shook his head.  
‘Good,’ the turian said. ‘Now, listen carefully. See all these guns?’ He waved a hand at the dead ones lying on the floor.  
The kid nodded.  
‘Don’t bother picking them up,’ Dex said. ‘Their innards are slagged. When the clips flared off, they put out a lot of heat. Roasted the electronics. My advice to you is, forget about guns.’  
The kid looked sceptical as well as frightened.  
Dex added, ‘The problem with violence is that sooner or later, you run into someone who’s better than you are. If you want my advice, go and find a friend who can read and write. Get them to teach you. A gun will get you dead, but an education might get you out.’ He pointed up, toward the more-civilised regions above them. ‘Now get lost. I’ve given you a second chance, but I don’t do third chances. Don’t let me see you again.’  
With that, Dex turned and walked away.

* * *

Dex was walking down the avenue that led to the Bow and Arrow. The route was poorly-lit and gloomy. Habitation-blocks loomed overhead on both sides. Most of the windows of the prefab pods were dark. Cables and ducts were strung out overhead, forming complicated webs between the buildings. What light there was spilled from the doors of shops and bars, or from small fires dotted here and there across the avenue. Clusters of people sat around them, dressed in rags and looking hungry. The groups eyed each other warily. The demographic was mixed - humans, turians, krogan, batarians and many vorcha. They were fewer salarians and asari.  
Regardless of species, Dex gave them all a wide berth.  
Thin streamers of smoke drifted lazily through the air. The whole scene was faintly hazy; the prefabs a few blocks away were softened in the half-darkness and the occasional lights were encircled with diffuse glowing halos. The air-quality was poor down here, although apparently some of the circulation systems were still functioning.  
This near the surface of the habitation-cylinder, it was cold. Dex could see breath steaming in front of peoples' faces. Apparently the heating systems were inactive down here as well. Dex kept his helmet on, having no desire to experience either the chill or the bad air.  
Various groups looked at him as he walked past, but none of them made a move on him. Dex kept one hand on his holster the whole time. He kept his eyes open the whole time, scanning over the surroundings.  
Some glaring pink and blue lights up ahead revealed his destination. THE BOW AND ARROW CLUB, they announced. The Bow and Arrow had its own generator, Dex knew, and the owners clearly weren't above flaunting their electrical resources.  
He walked up to the club.  
The Bow and Arrow took its own security seriously. The door-guards were krogan. They were armed - Eviscerator-model shotguns, Dex noted, with sensible mods too. And both of them were in full armour, red suits with black fist-and-skull insignia. Blood Pack mercs. There would be more of them inside. Given what this neighbourhood was like, Dex suspect there might be a couple of snipers watching too.  
'Stop,' one of the krogan barked. 'What do you want here, turian?'  
Dex wasn't taking any chances with krogan. He kept his hands where the guards could see them. 'I'm here to see the Finch,' he said, 'and maybe buy a few drinks.'  
The krogan's omnitool flickered into life. Its orange light reflected in his eye-lenses. The krogan peered at it for a moment, then grunted. 'So you are,' he noted. 'All right, go in. You can keep your gun. But if you want a fight, take it out here. Start one inside, and you'll get one. With us. Understood?'  
Dex nodded. 'Of course.'  
The krogan waved Dex through.  
He entered the Bow and Arrow. He walked into a wall of noise. Music throbbed through the air and the floor. Floating over and under it was a susurration of chatter. The Bow and Arrow was busy today. Dex scanned the scene.  
The club was much warmer than the outside. A mist of condensation fanned across the front of Dex's visor before he wiped it away. Experimentally, he took off the helmet, clipping it to his belt. The air was close and humid and cloyingly-warm. He could smell drinks and food - even this early in the morning, there was already a smell of alcohol.  
The bar was up ahead. Dex made his way through the throng, slowly and carefully.   
The Bow and Arrow was crawling with guns and knives. It seemed like almost everyone was armed. The Finch had picked particularly poorly today, Dex thought. The woman seemed to be obsessed with these sorts of places. Every time he’d met with her, it had been in a sleazy bar somewhere.  
Everywhere throughout the club were the Blood Pack krogan guards. Several of them had leashed varren. The fishdogs hissed and growled at the clubgoers.  
Dex reached the bar. For form's sake, he ordered a turian brandy, paying for it in cash. No way was he going to risk using his credit chit in here! That would be a sure-fire way to get it skimmed and see his account cleaned out.  
Dex made his way to a relatively quiet booth in the far corner. He sat down to wait. The Finch would know he was here; she would find him when she was ready. That was how things worked. If you needed the Finch's services, you had to wait for her.  
The music throbbed around him. The bandy sat untouched on the table. Dex wasn't going to risk dulling his reflexes with alcohol. The drink was there to avert unwanted questions. The crowd here was what passed for the wealthier Lower Warreners, but even amongst their company, Dex was notably better-dressed. He didn't want to attract any more attention than was necessary.  
As he sat, Dex's mind replayed the encounter with the Waypointers earlier. The momentary excitement of combat had passed and he was into what he thought of as the hangover phase. Dex felt flat and strangely empty. The elation of survival and victory had passed, replaced by the familiar second thoughts and doubts. Could he have put the other two Waypointers down without killing them? How much of it was his fault and how much was justifiable self-defence?  
And what about the kind? Had sparing him really been a mercy? With his gang-allies dead, how long would he survive for? And was advising someone in the Lower Warrens to get an education genuinely-helpful? Or had it just been arrogant grandstanding, while the surge of victory was still playing in Dex’s veins?  
Of course, that said, he hadn’t asked the Waypointers to try and mug him. They had some agency in this too. They could have let him pass, or sought terms.  
Frustrated, Dex shook his head. The brandy was looking very tempting, the club lights glinting in reflection on the glass. Moral complexity - sometimes he felt rudderless, adrift in a sea of contradictions.  
Dex had a problematic relationship with violence. He was good at it, and had based two careers on it. However, that skill also worried him. What if he went too far? Would he know that he was going too far if he did? The awkward problem was that he actually liked fighting. He enjoyed the challenge and the contest of skill, and the adrenaline rush made him feel alive. But he also recognised that this was a suspect pleasure at best. He worried that one day he might just snap and go off on some murderous rampage.  
Was this, he wondered, how monsters got started?  
Dex liked to imagine that he'd drawn some boundaries around his dubious aspect. He liked to think that he was a warrior, not a murderer. This was why he insisted on guard jobs rather than merc ones. If he used his skills to protect and defend others, then that had to mean he was doing good. The difficulty was that he'd tried to do exactly the same thing while serving in the turian army, and eventually squaring the circle between dutifully-following orders and upholding his conscience had proved impossible.  
Dex feared finding himself in that place once more. Career, conscience, cashflow - pick any two. It sometimes seemed there was no way to pick all three. He'd been wrestling with this dilemma since before he arrived on Omega, and he was no closer to resolving it.  
The brandy was staring at him. He reached for it, then put his hand down. Spirits damn it! Wouldn’t it be good if something could be simple, just for once?  
He could feel the music as well as hear it. It throbbed up out of the floor and through the soles of his boots. As he breathed in, he realised he could smell the brandy.  
After about twenty minutes, there was movement near him.  
A plump human woman with dark skin and hair dropped into the seat opposite him. By Lower Warren standards she was incredibly well-dressed - a leather jacket, a blue blouse, a pair of beige pants and proper shoes! Her hair was up in a neat bun behind her head. She was unarmed. The Finch didn't need weapons. The people she dealt with needed her far too much to risk hurting her.  
'Dex,' she said. 'Hello.'  
'Finch,' he said, nodding. His mandibles moved. Dex had no idea what her real name was. The Finch didn't share it with anyone.  
'I'm surprised to see you again,' she said. 'I thought I'd fixed you up nice and good with Kat.'  
The Finch had mediated his relationship with Kat, for which he'd paid her a substantial fee. 'Well,' he said, 'there've been difficulties.'  
The Finch lifted an eyebrow. 'Really.'  
Dex cleared his throat. 'Yes. So I'm looking for work again. I thought I'd speak to you.'  
The Finch was a specialist information broker. She dealt in recruitment - the sort of employment vacancies that weren't publicly-listed. She had a substantial list of clients and a first-rate reputation. Her testimonials file was glowing. It was how she was able to get away with her quirks, like insisting on meeting in person in these questionable establishments. When asked about it, she just shrugged and said that meeting somewhere rough got rid of the lazy and unreliable.  
'Well,' the Finch said, 'that could be difficult. I'm guessing Kat wasn't happy?'  
Awkwardly, Dex nodded. He thought of the morning's weird phone call.  
The Finch sighed. 'Well, there's a new merc group who need a new sniper. Apparently that Archangel bastard got their last one a cycle ago.'  
'No,' Dex said. 'Not interested.'  
'Scared?' she asked.  
Dex's mandibles moved in dismissal of that idea. 'No. I just don't want to be a rented murderer for some idiot gang boss.'  
The Finch sighed. 'Honestly, Dex, this is difficult. If you've pissed of Kat, word will get round. You're not going to get to be picky about who takes you next. Frankly, I had a hard enough time getting Kat to contract you in the first place.'  
'A service for which I paid, in full,' Dex pointed out. He felt a little desperate. This wasn't going well.  
Kat sighed. 'Yes, but I bill after the fact. If I take a client on, I have to do all the work now. Up front. And if I can't place you, I get nothing. Dex, I have bills to pay too. I am not a charity.'  
'I never said you were a charity. And with my skills-'  
'If I can't place you,' the Finch continued, 'then it means I've wasted time I could spend placing someone else.'  
'But you agreed to speak to me,' Dex said.  
She nodded. 'True.' She frowned. 'Would you consider an off-station job?'  
Dex considered it. 'Possibly,' he said.  
The Finch raised her eyebrow again. 'I'm sensing a complication, aren't I?'  
Dex sighed. 'I can't go anywhere that's a turian colony. And I can't go anywhere that has an extradition treaty with the Hierarchy.'  
The Finch looked exasperated. 'I knew there was more to your story than you said.'  
He'd told her that he was ex-military, looking to start a new life on Omega, away from the Hierarchy. All of these statements were true, but they omitted a few key details.  
'This is Omega,' Dex said. 'Everyone has a story. And no-one wants to share. In that sense, I'm normal.'  
The Finch looked around the club, then she looked down at her fingers. 'You've pissed off someone powerful, haven't you?'  
Dex said nothing.  
The Finch sighed. The music-track changed, to something with less bass and more actual rhythm. ‘Dex,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry. As a person, I have no objection to you. You’re honest, hard-working and you try to stick to your principles. Those are all admirable things, at least in theory. But there’s no way you can make this work in reality. Least of all if you’ve got the fucking Hierarchy on your tail.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what you did. I don’t even want to know what you did. But I don’t think I can help you.’  
‘Damn,’ Dex said.  
The Finch moved as if to stand up, then she apparently thought twice about it. She settled back, looking thoughtful. ‘Funny thing is,’ she said, ‘I haven’t heard anything about you from Kat. I would’ve expected a note by now.’ The Finch summoned her omnitool interface, looking down at the holoscreen. She frowned pursing her lips. ‘No. Nothing about you. And she’s pretty quick on the blacklisting, usually.’  
Feeling numb, Dex said, ‘She’s probably just busy.’  
‘Yes - ah, of course!’ Enlightenment glimmered in the Finch’s eyes.  
‘What?’ Dex asked.  
‘I know what it is,’ the Finch said. ‘She’s already got your replacement. She’ll be busy talking to him now.’  
‘My replacement?’  
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It was all a bit odd. Kat actually paid me to headhunt someone specific. It was her idea, out of the blue. I didn’t suggest it in any way.’  
‘Oh,’ Dex said. He vaguely wondered whom the lucky person was.  
‘Someone I’d dealt with before,’ the Finch added. ‘One job with Kat’s organisation, actually. About six months ago. Just before all that craziness when someone went for Aria.’  
Dex remembered that mess quite well. He’d got to see it all, from the confusion as the shot rang out across the plaza to the flash of light as T’Loak’s barrier flared. And then all hell had broken loose. Assassination attempts on T’Loak were a reliable way to pitch Omega into days of total chaos. The chaos would last as long as it took T’Loak’s organisation to find the guilty party and give them several new breathing holes.  
‘Oh, that business,’ he said. It had landed him several weeks of extra work. What had meant to be a one-day job had turned into a longer arrangement, as Kat had wanted a round-the-clock guard on her premises.  
‘And she doesn’t usually like krogan,’ the Finch added.  
Dex blinked. A krogan? From what he knew, Kat hated them. He’d once overheard her complaining about how the salarians had been “excessively merciful” with the genophage. Even supporters of the genophage rarely described it as a mercy.  
‘A krogan?’ he asked.  
The Finch nodded. ‘Krondesh, he’s called. Fairly young as they go. Not a day over eight decades, I think. Built like a brick shithouse, of course. Violet headplates - painted, I think. That was how I found him again. Kat didn’t know his name, but there aren’t that many krogan with violet headplates. I gather it means something on Tuchanka, but I don’t really care what.’  
Dex stared. ‘Why would she be hiring a krogan she doesn’t know the name of?’  
The Finch shrugged. ‘Apparently he was on a work crew she hired a few years ago. She said she liked the way he did things - just that, no details.’  
‘She liked him so much she didn’t stop to ask his name?’ Dex felt his mandibles move. First the apologetic call, now this. Kat was acting strangely today.  
The Finch shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me. She paid me good money to track him down, though. And I did. He was quieter than I expected. You always assume krogan will be boisterous and angry. I found him in a library. Reading a book.’  
Dex blinked. Then he supposed he shouldn’t really be surprised. Krogan were perfectly capable of learning to read, even if many of them were only semi-literate in practise. And that was due to the lack of a functioning education system on Tuchanka, rather than any innate deficiency.  
‘A bookish krogan?’  
‘Who is also a biotic, and a part-time bouncer at one of the Kima District clubs. He knows his way around a fight.’  
‘And this Krondesh was happy to be headhunted?’  
‘Kat made him a good offer. And she threw something else in as well. She didn’t tell me what.’  
A good deal, with some extra thing thrown? That sounded rather familiar. Dex’s mandibles twitched and his eyes narrowed. What was Kat up to?  
‘Anyway,’ the Finch said, ‘enough chatting. I have work to do. Goodbye, and good luck.’ With that, she got up and left.  
Dex sat there for a few more minutes, puzzling over the day’s strange events. Finally, he decided it was time to concede the inevitable. Something was going on, and spirits help him, his curiosity was itching.  
‘I need to go and talk to Kat, don’t I?’ he said to no-one in particular.


	3. Know Your Enemy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dex has reluctantly agreed to meet with Kat, following the failure of his appointment with the Finch. But what does she want? And why has she invited a krogan along too?

'Dex.' The corners of Kat's mouth quirked, but the smile fell short of her eyes. 'I'm glad you could join us.'  
Dex was back at Kat's headquarters. He'd come straight there from the Lower Warrens. The journey back had been much quieter than his journey in. Apparently word had spread that he was bad news, and none of the local roughians had bothered him. Dex was stood in one of the meeting rooms near Kat's office, helmet under one arm.  
He sniffed the air. It had the familiar close smell that pervaded this place, although it was a lot better than anywhere in the Lower Warrens. All around them were the sounds of Omega - louder here than in the Warrens, Dex noted. Presumably that was a sign of the poor condition of the Warrens area. Less noise meant less working machinery. No risk of that here. Directly overhead, an air-fan was rattling and groaning in its housing.  
'Kat,' Dex said. 'You said you wanted to talk.' He shrugged. 'Okay.'  
She looked him up and down, noting all his gear. 'You've got crap stains on your boots,' she said.  
Dex looked down. 'Oh,' he said. Kat was right. His boots were stained from his journey through the pipe. He looked back up. His mandibles twitched. He shrugged. 'I've had a busy morning.'  
Kat looked snide. 'How many dead?' she said.  
'Only two,' Dex said.  
Kat blinked; apparently, that wasn't what she'd expected to hear. 'Doubtless all black-hearted villains, I'm sure,' she said.  
It seemed that Nasty Kat was back. Oddly enough, this made Dex relax. Dealing with an apologetic and self-aware Kat this morning had been disorienting. Nasty Kat, at least, was a known quantity.  
'So,' Dex said, 'why am I here?'  
She nodded. 'Yes, it's probably time I explained the rest of what I want. Come to the office.' She turned and walked off.  
Dex followed her. A few moments later, they were stood in Kat's office. They weren't alone. Lounging against one wall was a krogan. Dex realised immediately that this must be the Krondesh person the Finch had been talking about.  
Krondesh was an average size for his species. At seven feet, he was comfortably taller than Dex's six. Krondesh had a fully-developed crest, although he was young-looking overall. His face didn't yet have the deep eyes and weathered skin that one expected on older krogan. There were several scars but they were small, and all on the left side of his face. Krondesh had red eyes and beige skin.  
His most notable feature, though, was the luridly-violent crest.  
It was hard not to stare at his headplates. They were painted - Dex noted that in places, the paint was chipped, and the more natural brownish shade below showed through. Dex had never heard of a krogan painting his crest before. He wondered if it meant something, or whether Krondesh was just some deviant individual.  
'Dex,' Kat said, 'this is Krondesh. He'll be working with you.'  
Dex's mandibles moved and his eyes narrowed. Pairing up with a krogan? What was going on here? 'Only if I agree to whatever this is,' Dex said.  
Krondesh had his arms folded. He was leaning against the wall beside Kat's desk. He was wearing a generic krogan worker's outfit, made of a rough brown fabric. It was plain and unornamented.  
On his belt, Krondesh had a sheathed knife. The hilt was inset with a couple of small gems and from what Dex could see of it, the workmanship was impeccable. The expensive-looking blade contrasted sharply with the rest of his attire.  
Aside from the knife, the krogan was unarmed.  
Krondesh regarded Dex in turn. He looked up and down and apparently wasn't impressed with what he saw. The krogan snorted. 'Apparently your bird friend isn't interested, T'raik,' he said.  
Kat's face flickered and her eyes darkened. Dex noticed a preliminary tightening of her fists. Then she appeared to get hold of herself. She took a breath. 'I didn't hire you for your charming attitude, Krondesh,' she said.  
A thought occurred to Dex. 'So what clan are you?' he asked Krondesh.  
The krogan's eyes snapped onto him. 'None of your business, bird,' Krondesh said. 'I could ask which patria of which gens you belong to.'  
Dex blinked. A krogan who was familiar with the turian patrilineal system? That was unexpected. Then he remembered the Finch saying she'd seen the krogan reading. All right, a smart krogan. Dex supposed there had to be at least a few out there. There were billions of the big brutes wandering around on Tuchanka, after all, so random chance alone would imply a few reasonably-intelligent ones.  
In case of the patrial question, Dex had an answer lined up. 'My father's patrial line is Ilyrian,' he said, 'and our family is part of the gens Sempronius.'  
Like his colony paint, this was a lie.  
'And you're called Dex,' the krogan rumbled. 'That could be diminutive for Decimus, or for Decarius.'  
Dex blinked. He revised his estimate of Krondesh's intelligence up a notch. 'Yes,' he said. 'Decarius, of course.'  
Another lie.  
No doubt.' The krogan snorted again. 'And I note that the gens Sempronius has member-families on both the colonies of Tanaria and Sinox. And Tanaria and Sinox are noted for their similar face paint. In fact the main difference is that the Tanarian lines are more orange and Sinish more red.'  
Dex started feeling uneasy. 'Many turians get that wrong,' he noted.  
Krondesh nodded. 'Your eyes are weaker at the red wavelengths,' he said.  
This was true; Palaven's sun was an F-type, so it put out a lot of UV. Turian eyes were consequently more sensitive at shorter wavelength. They could see red and orange, but the colours were hard to pick apart.  
The paint on Dex's face was a shade exactly in the middle between Tanaria's orange and Sinox's red. Most turians would be confused by it.  
'And,' Krondesh noted, 'the other difference between Tanaria and Sinox is that little whorl, right in the middle of the forehead.'  
Dex stiffened.  
The krogan said, 'And on your forehead, it's smudged.'  
Of course it was; Dex smudged it deliberately, every time he re-applied the paint. Dex forced himself to relax. ‘Not my problem if you can’t read a perfectly clear insignia,’ he said.  
‘I bet it isn’t,’ Krondesh agreed. ‘And I bet when you met a Sinish you say you’re a Tanarian, and when you meet a Tanarian you’re a Sinish man.’  
Dex kept his face impassive and his mandibles still. He realised he was wearing his best parade-ground poker face again. That guess was essentially the truth. The krogan was sharp!  
Wearing no face paint was the traditional option, of course, but it was one that would instantly invite suspicion from other turians and even some aliens. Wearing his actual lines would be a real danger. But the idea of wearing false colours wouldn’t even occur to many other turians, so it had seemed like a sensible proposition.  
Still, Dex could well recall how strange it had felt, two years ago, when for the first time in his life, he had deliberately applied false colours to his face.  
The krogan added, ‘And with other turians you probably just let them guess.’ He shrugged. ‘Not my problem. I’m not a turian. Don’t care who you fucked off. Or who you’re hiding from.’  
‘You assume a lot about me,’ Dex said, keeping his voice neutral.  
‘I assume nothing,’ Krondesh said. ‘Your reactions are telling, though.’  
He realised that Kat was watching all of this with interest. Fascination glittered in her eyes. ‘Well done,’ she said to Krondesh. ‘You’ve got more out of him in a few minutes than I did in half a year.’  
'You seem well-informed about turians,' Dex said to the krogan.  
The krogan shrugged. 'I like to know who my enemies are,' he said. Then he sneered. ‘Knowledge is power. Makes them easier to kill.’  
‘So is this what I’m here for?’ Dex asked. ‘An interrogation? Because if so, I’ve got other things to do...’  
Kat shook her head. ‘No.’ She walked over to her desk and tapped a couple of keys on the console. A holographic image flickered into light. It was a picture of a well-dressed batarian. He had an expensive suit and was on a stage, addressing what appeared to be some sort of rally. He had a hand balled into a fist and his four eyes were all squinting, his face folded up into an expression of anger. He looked vaguely familiar. Behind him were several armed soldiers, apparently a guard-force of some sort.  
Dex frowned for a moment, trying to place the speaking batarian’s face. But he was distracted.  
The krogan was still watching Dex, not the hologram. Dex found himself staring back. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘Any reason for that glare?’  
Kat cleared her throat. 'If we could return to the matter at hand,' she said, tapping a finger on her console. Their attention reluctantly gravitated back. She pointed a finger at the hologram. 'This is Arrek Karrean.'  
'Ugly bastard,' Krondesh noted.  
Dex frowned. 'Wait, I've heard that name before somewhere.’  
Kat nodded. 'You probably have. He was the mastermind behind Archon Trefak's appointment twenty-eight years ago. At one time he and Trefak were thick as thieves. Until recently, Karrean was the Minister for Defence - Number Four in the Hegemony’s state hierarchy. Only the Legates of the Committees and the Archon himself outranked him.'  
It was Krondesh who spoke. 'You want us to go to the Batarian Hegemony and shoot one of their highest-ranking officials?'  
Kat shook her head. 'You don't need to,' she said. 'He's here.'  
Dex stared. 'What's he doing here?'  
'He and Trefak had a falling out roughly two years ago. There was some sort of batarian scheme involving a human colony in the Exodus Cluster. And an asteroid.' Kat shrugged. 'I didn't get the full details. It seems Karrean went off on his own initiative and set it up without telling Trefak.'  
'Or the Ordinary and Superior Committees,' Krondesh noted.  
Dex blinked. A krogan who knew about batarian internal politics?  
Kat shook her head. 'Why would he tell them? No-one expects any surprises from the Committees. And certainly not since Trefak upped the property qualification.' She looked cynical. 'Apparently it was too liberal to let people without a thousand slaves vote.'  
Once they were jointly-elected by both Committees of State, batarian archons served for life. Trefak was one of the youngest men ever to hold that office, and in the time he'd already been in power, he'd done more damage than all four of his predecessors combined. Prior to Trefak, politics had been the hobby of the top thousand families in the Hegemony. Now the government was essentially a private social club for the uppermost fifty. Trefak had the rare distinction of having inherited a bad system and then making it much worse. His tenure had been marked by a growing climate of xenophobia and militarism within the Hegemony and a sharp deterioration in its relations with external societies. When the batarians had quit the Citadel, it had come as quite a rude awakening to the rest of the galaxy. The expansion of the humans into the Traverse had been the nominal pretext, but it was known that Trefak had wanted the batarians out of Council oversight for years.  
Apparently the Citadel Conventions were just too restrictive for a man like him.  
'So Karrean did something dumb and Trefak put his friend out on his backside,' Dex said.  
Kat nodded. 'Basically, yes. Apparently Karrean was declared an outlaw and his property seized. There was a warrant for his arrest, but someone leaked the news to him two hours early. It seems he made a bolt for one of the big ports on Khar'shan and bribed his way past the guards. And then he turned up here, on Omega.'  
‘So he’s here,’ Krondesh said. ‘So what?’  
Kat tapped another key. The picture changed. This one was a grainy image of Karrean walking down an Omegan corridor - security drone footage, Dex guessed. The expensive business jacket and sharp shoes were gone. In their place, Karrean was wearing a dirty and battered-looking olive-green combat suit. There were some metal blades strapped to various places. He had a new scar along one side of his face. He was carrying a vicious-looking gun.  
‘I don’t recognise the gun,’ Krondesh said.  
‘It’s a harpoon gun,’ Dex said, distractedly. ‘They’re made by Kishock Industries - a subsidiary of Batarian State Arms. They’re not very accurate and the charging function is unreliable - buggy VI firmware, so I hear. So the shots don’t always short out your barriers. Just as well - when one of those harpoon-heads hits you, it makes a mess.’  
‘You sound like you’ve seen it,’ Krondesh observed.  
‘I have,’ Dex said. He didn’t elaborate. He noticed he was clenching his mandibles tightly to his face.  
‘Why’s he strapped metal bits to himself?’ Krondesh asked.  
‘It’s something batarian slavers do,’ Dex said. ‘They often have to take people on up close, for obvious reasons. The blades make it difficult for victims to hit back without hurting themselves. And once the slaver’s got you, you better not struggle too much, lest you drag yourself across one of those.’  
‘That would hurt,’ Krondesh noted.  
‘Yes,’ Dex agreed. ‘Plus there’s the intimidation value. Lots of metal spikes look scary.’  
‘I wonder how often they nail themselves to walls,’ Krondesh mused.  
‘Note his accomplices,’ Kat said. Focusing on the holo again, Dex noted that there appeared to be three mercs tagging along behind Karrean. They were all batarians. None of them had an obvious uniform, so they were presumably freelancers of some kind. ‘Since he arrived on Omega, out good friend Karrean’s gone back to his roots. Slaving.’  
One of the mercs had a bundled-up net slung over his shoulder, Dex saw.  
‘Should we care?’ Krondesh asked, sounding bored.  
‘He’s been doing a good line in krogan and turians recently,’ Kat said, ‘so yes, I’d say you should. But wait till you see this holo.’ She tapped the key again.  
The scene changed. Karrean and his troops were escorting several terrified and shackled prisoners. They were in a very run-down section of the habitat. The bad lighting and the steam from their mouths gave it a distinct resemblance to a Lower Warrens corridor.  
In front of the group were several aliens. They were not of a species Dex recognised. They had insectile, etiolated bodies. Their didn’t appear to be wearing any kind of obvious clothing but their hide appeared to consist of chitinous plates. They were carrying weird-looking guns. The one at the front was the strangest. Glowing patterns of energy rippled over its body.  
‘What’s that?’ Dex asked.  
Krondesh leaned forward. ‘Some sort of biotic barrier, I think,’ he said. ‘But look how bright the corona is. Very powerful.’ The krogan was clearly interested. His earlier dismissive aloofness had disappeared.  
‘Karrean is doing deals with Collectors,’ Kat said.  
Dex felt sceptical. ‘They’re a myth,’ he said.  
Kat shook her head. ‘No. They’re real enough. Just look there.’  
‘The footage could be faked,’ Krondesh said. ‘Anyone could do this with image-editing VIs.’  
‘True,’ Kat said, ‘but it isn’t faked. If I was going to fake something, I’d make it more plausible.’  
Dex had to concede a point there. The sheer weirdness of the footage was an argument of sorts for its veracity. Who’d think to make up something like this?  
Kat said, ‘Collector activity’s been going on for a few centuries. I remember; I was here before it started.’  
Dex’s mandibles moved. Just how old was she?  
She continued, ‘They seem to be able to cross the Omega-4 Relay. Either they live on the other side of it, or it’s a way station to wherever they do live. They aren’t seen very often. That said, I know the frequency of their visits has gone up sharply over the last couple of years.’  
‘I’d have thought I’d have heard more of them,’ Dex said.  
Kat shook her head. ‘T’Loak hates them. As soon as she find out they’re on the station, she has them escorted off. At gun-point, if necessary. So they don’t actually come here that often. When they’re here, they’re after one thing - slaves. Rumour has it she thinks they’re destabilising the local market.’  
‘Sow some economic chaos,’ the krogan mused. ‘First step on a coup plan.’  
Kat nodded. ‘That’s how I see it, too. Anyway one thing T’Loak absolutely hates is people who help the Collectors.’  
Dex had an idea he could guess where this was going. ‘Like Karrean,’ he said.  
‘Yes,’ Kat said. ‘Karrean’s trying to rebuild his fortunes with technology he’s bartered off of the Collectors. He’s only still alive because he’s hidden it from T’Loak so far.’  
‘Where do we come into this?’ Krondesh asked. He shifted from one massive foot to the other.  
‘I’m ambitious,’ Kat said. ‘I want to expand my operations. But, realistically, I need to get in T’Loak’s good books. I don’t have the credits or the firepower to go up against her organisation. And I’m not dumb enough to try.’  
Realisation dawned on Dex. ‘You’re not being generous,’ he said.  
‘No,’ Kat agreed. ‘I’m offering you both good money. And you, Dex, I’m offering the Widow as a sweetener. You, Krondesh, I’m offering that suit of Berserker armour. If you do the job, I get to offer T’Loak a scalp that she’s sure to appreciate. That makes it well worth the money. An investment, if you will.’ She smirked.  
‘And this wider context you promised?’ Dex asked.  
‘That should be obvious, Decimus,’ Kat said. Dex winced. Apparently Krondesh had tipped her off to the correct praenomen. Oh well - there were thousands of other turians called Decimus, so it didn’t matter that much. ‘You like to imagine you’re a noble principled protector, not a two-credit merc. Fine, have your illusions if you want. But Karrean here - well, okay, I’m not a moral person. And I don’t much care for morals - give me the money instead! At least I can see that.  
‘But by any reasonable moral standard, Karrean is a monster. He worked to put an out-and-out tyrant in power in his home society, in full knowledge of the consequences. He worked to make the government even more oppressive and nasty than it was before. He manipulated a fanatical underling into a scheme to get millions of people killed on a colony elsewhere. He’s tried to provoke all-out war with the Alliance three other times now, just to give his companies a pretext to try raiding Earth. At his peak of wealth and power, his plantations had tens of thousands of chained victims being worked slowly to death on them.’ She shrugged. ‘And now he’s selling innocent people to Collectors. And fuck only knows what the buggy bastards want with them.’  
‘Nothing good, I’m sure,’ Krondesh observed.  
‘Basically,’ Kat said, ‘Karrean is a complete piece of shit. And there’s no way in which killing him would make the universe a worse place. He’s the textbook example of a one-bullet problem. And put together, the pair of you have the brawn, the brains and the skills to take the nasty little fucker down. Does that context alter your moral calculations?’  
Dex was silent for several long, slow breaths. He stared at the holographic image. Finally, he said, ‘Very well. I’m in.’


	4. A Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A council of war is held, and a tentative plan is arrived at...

A council of war was taking place in Kat's office.  
'So,' Dex said, 'what do we know about Karrean's activities? I assume you have a bit more than just this footage.'  
Kat nodded. 'The pictures were passed to me by a disgruntled employee.'  
'Were they.' Krondesh sounded dubious. The massive krogan had joined them over by the desk. Up close, he loomed large. He kept looking down on Dex - quite deliberately, the turian suspected. Whenever the krogan looked him over, Dex had the odd feeling that he was being evaluated and found lacking on some fundamental level. Being scrutinised by a krogan was a weird feeling.  
This time, the krogan was examining Kat.  
'You still haven't explained,' Krondesh said, 'how exactly you got involved in this.'  
Kat shrugged. 'That's simple enough. Since he got here, Karrean's been diversifying. Apaprently doing deals with Collectors wasn't enough. He's been trying to get into the local drug trade. That's how I became aware of him.'  
'So he's cutting into your margins.'  
Kat looked pained, but she nodded.  
Well, this was interesting. Yesterday's weird conversation started to make sense now. It was no wonder Kat had been reluctant to give Dex the full story. Admitting that a rival was having some success would be a difficult confession for her.  
'Not everyone in his retinue is happy with him,' she said. 'Some of the footage comes from a camera-drone he carts around with him, to document his meetings. It seems he decided to skim off some of his contractors' pay.'  
'That's dumb,' Krondesh said.  
'Yes, but remember this guy is used to dealing with soldiers, slaves and corporate execs. People he owns. Not Omegan freelancers. He probably didn't see anything wrong with it.'  
Dex bridled at the idea of soldiers being lumped in with slaves. He reminded himself that Kat was talking about batarians, not turians. Anyway, at this stage he was the last person who should be concerned about defending the honour of the turian army; Dex had seen, up close, just how much that honour was worth. And that revelation had been shattering.  
'So they're peddling you the holos,' Krondesh guessed, 'to make up the difference?'  
Kat nodded. 'Yes. To top up their wages while they look for another job, I think. And the beauty is, Karrean seems to have no idea. My guess also is that his contractors are eyeing up other potential employers. Like me.'  
Krondesh laughed. 'Sounds like Karrean’s a marked man, then.'  
Dex had to agree. This sort of behaviour was what you saw when no-one expected an employer to survive much longer. Karrean clearly had no grasp of how things worked on Omega. The man was dangerous, arrogant and a fool as well.  
'All the more reason,' Kat said, 'for me to get my hit in first. The clock's ticking on this one.'  
'So I assume you have some idea where we can find him?' Dex asked.  
'He keeps a regular schedule,' Kat said.  
'Idiot,' Krondesh said. 'I'm even more surprised no-one's skragged him already.'  
'As I said, this is getting urgent,' Kat said.  
For a moment, Dex felt uneasy again. This job would be an out-and-out, unprovoked attack. And one that, if it went as planned, would end in murder. However, if what he'd heard was correct, then Karrean would be no loss to the galaxy. And if Kat and the holos were correct, and this batarian was selling fellow turians to the Collectors ... Dex felt his mandibles twitch. Overhead, a pipe groaned somewhere in the ceiling.  
It was weird to discover that the Collectors actually existed.  
Dex had always dismissed the Collectors as nothing more than an urban legend. It was hard to believe that an entire civilisation could be so effectively concealed. If Kat's footage was genuine, though, it would appear that apparently yes, a civilisation could be hidden. There was no point arguing against the facts, even if the facts were bizarre. One thing that the Collector tales always agreed on, though, was that people Collected were never seen again.  
Then there was the matter of Karrean himself. Yes, this would arguably be Dex's first murder. But putting a stop to Karrean's activities would spare turian lives. In a real sense, if he took this job, he would do more to protect his people than he had done in twelve years in the Army. It would even help aliens too, so in a sense it would be quite generous. Strange to think that killing could ever be an act of generosity.  
Dex realised that taking this shot needn't necessarily bother his conscience too much.  
'Karrean,' Kat was saying, 'has a fortified mansion in the Kima District. Even has its own air plant, water works and a private reactor.'  
'I thought Aria didn't allow that,' Krondesh said.  
'T'Loak tries to keep a monopoly on electricity generation,' Kat agreed. 'Along with the eezo, the big reactor is key to her organisation's financial base. But she doesn't entirely succeed. In general a small basement generator won't get T'Loak's thugs kicking down your door.'  
'Sounds like Karrean's got more than that,' Krondesh said.  
Kat nodded. 'Yes. I've heard some rumours that he's got enough spare juice that he's looking at selling electricity to the neighbours.'  
'Three guess what happens if you miss a payment,' Dex said.  
'Quite,' Kat said. 'Anyway, if he did start selling, he'd be putting himself in direct competition with T'Loak.'  
'Not healthy,' Dex said.  
'Indeed. Most of the time, Karrean stays bunkered down in his mansion. No point going after him there - guards, anti-intruder VIs, mechs, kinetic barriers, the works.'  
'A fortress,' Krondesh rumbled.  
Kat nodded. 'Yes. However, regular as clockwork every eight days, Karrean goes off to an appointment down in the Lower Warrens. He goes in person.'  
'Dumb,' Krondesh said.  
Based on the morning's experience, Dex had to agree.  
'He takes his entourage,' Kat said. 'Enough guns that no-one bothers him casually. But the hangers-on are all paid contractors.'  
'The same people he's shorting the cash on,' Dex said.  
Kat nodded. 'In the event of a serious fight, most of them will just bug out. I've taken the precaution of paying several of his regulars to do exactly that.'  
'What's he doing down there?' Dex asked.  
Kat shrugged. 'There's an illicit docking bay right down near the bottom of the Warrens. T'Loak's people never go there. We think it's where the Collectors come through. And that's whom he goes to meet. We think these little meetings are where they show him their trade goods and he takes a shopping list from them.'  
A shopping list. For people. Dex shuddered. The room felt colder all of a sudden. He could hear the room’s fan-blades, rattling in their housings. Air sighed into the room in a continual light breeze.  
'The actual trade happens later in the week,' Kat explained. 'That meeting probably isn't so vulnerable - the Collectors themselves will be there, in force. We just don't know enough about their firepower to make it worth the trouble. But the preliminary meeting is the weak point.'  
'I assume we're not breaking into the bay itself,' Krondesh said.  
'I'm not going to micromanage you on this,' Kat said. 'You both know more about violence than I do.'  
Dex's eyes drifted to the Carnifex, holstered at Kat's hip. He found himself doubting her sincerity.  
'The bay would be a bad attack point,' he said. 'I assume it's run by one of the Warrens gangs. They'll have security on it. Plus the Collectors themselves might take an interest.'  
'What do we do, then?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex looked back at Kat. 'Do we know anything about the route Karrean will take?'  
Kat started laughing. It was an unpleasant hacking noise. After a few moments, she managed to control herself. 'Yes,' she said. 'My sources say he takes the same route every time.'  
Krondesh sighed. 'Definitely an idiot.'  
'Well then,' Dex said, 'I guess arranging an ambush won't be a problem.'  
Kat glanced down at Dex's boots. 'Particularly since, unlike you, he's too important to go through the sewers.'  
So she'd guessed he'd been in the Warrens this morning. Or perhaps the Finch had told her? Dex's mandibles flexed in irritation, but he supposed it didn't matter so much now. 'There's a sewer-free route in?'  
She nodded. 'Yes, but you need to be in with several of the local gangs. Karrean pays them all to let him past.'  
'Where?' Dex asked.  
Kat tapped a couple of keys. A holo of the station came up. It showed the habitation cylinder that contained Gozu and the Lower Warrens. 'The last elevator stops here,' Kat said. A red line blinked into existence, stopping just above the boundary between Gozu and the Warrens. 'Down here -' a way beneath it, another line blinked into life '-there's an old elevator corridor. One of the gangs has turned it into a walkway.'  
Krondesh blinked. 'You walk down it? Vertically down?'  
'Mass effect generators,' Kat said. 'Little ones. Inside the tube, "down" is actually out. I've been in it twice. You just walk along the inside of the cylinder. It's like being in a tunnel.'  
Technically, there was a slight natural gravitational field within Omega. The station itself was massive, due to its size, and so was the asteroidal endcap that it sprouted from. However, the vast bulk of the gravity inside was set up by artificial mass fields. By convention, "down" was pointed toward the endcap, but there was no in-principle reason why it couldn't be oriented somewhere else. It was just a matter of reprogramming some mass effect generators.  
This second red line ran all the way to the base of the Lower Warrens.  
'When you get to where you want to go,' Kat said, 'you climb out through the nearest hatch. There's a bit of a jerk when the gravity shifts around you, but it's by far the easiest way to get into the Warrens. And the safest. The gangs don't allow trouble in their tube. There are guards posted every hundred metres.'  
This was new to Dex, but then, he didn’t travel to the Lower Warrens unless he could absolutely avoid it. Even the Finch didn’t go there that often. There were plenty of disreputable clubs and bars for her to lurk in even within Gozu.  
'No need to get shit on your boots,' the krogan added, looking at Dex's feet.  
Dex realised he was going to have to clean his boots, sooner rather than later.  
'So we can't get him inside the tube,' Dex said, ignoring Krondesh’s interjection.  
'No,' Kat agreed. 'But there is this gap here.' She pointed to the gap between the two lines. 'To get from the elevator to the shaft entrance, he has to walk across two levels and three hundred metres.'  
An open walk? That sounded promising. Dex found himself nodding. 'What's in there?'  
Kat moved her hand through the image to zoom in. The view expanded. At the front of the area was a flight of stairs, leading down from the bottom of Gozu. There was a gate at the top, marked as gang-controlled. So that was no use. Beyond that was a length of public corridor, with another flight of stairs at the far end leading down to the entrance to the shaft.  
And in the middle was a choke point.  
'What's this?' Dex asked, pointing at the narrow section.  
'A collapsed hab-block,' Kat said. 'It got shot up in one of the gang wars and a fire broke out.' In a closed environment like Omega, fires were bad news. 'The suppression systems don't work anymore in the Warrens, so it burnt until it caved in.'  
'Nasty,' Krondesh said.  
'It looks like this,' Kat said, tapping a few more keys. She called up an image of the wrecked hab-block. The debris was spilled most of the way across the street, a jagged mass of broken concrete, rusty rebar and bent pipes. The mound averaged three metres high. The slopes at its edges were steep and looked unstable. There was no way anyone would be climbing over that. Next to it, the only way past was a single narrow gap between the mound of rubble and the opposite wall.  
'Oh nice,' Dex said. 'They'll have to go through single-file.' A glimmering of a plan was forming. He looked up at the krogan. 'Krondesh. What do you know to do?'  
The krogan blinked. 'Hit stuff?' he asked.  
'I mean, anything else? Any weapons you're good with? Any special skills?'  
Understanding dawned. 'I know a few biotic techniques,' the krogan said. He made a mnemonic gesture and a ripple of energy washed around him. The corona hissed and popped, glowing a faint blue. 'I can make a barrier,' the krogan said, his voice slightly distorted by the energy field around him. He waved his hand and with a fizz it vanished. 'If needs be I can make it explode, too.'  
Dex's mandibles lifted up. 'That could be useful. Anything else?'  
'Sure. I know how to make a shockwave.' He started gesturing.  
'STOP! NOT IN MY OFFICE!' Kat's face was filled concern.  
'Keep your scalp on, blue arse,' the krogan told her. 'I wasn't actually going to go and do it.'  
Dex felt some amusement. Seeing Kat discomfited was entertaining.  
The krogan added, 'I also know now to drop warp fields on things. I'm better at that then I am at the other two.' The krogan brightened, his eyes gleaming. 'In fact, there's this little trick I know, where you warp something, then hit it with a shockwave. The warp field collapses and you get a nice bang as all the energy gets loose! Boom!' The krogan pounded his fists together, beaming. The thud echoed in the small space of the office.  
Apparently things exploding made him happy.  
Dex was nodding slowly. Warping and shockwaves. And a krogan smart enough to use them effectively. Perhaps Krondesh's recruitment made some sense after all.  
'Guns?' he asked.  
'Yes please,' Krondesh said.  
Dex rolled his eyes. 'Any in particular?'  
The krogan said, ‘I have a Katana-model shotgun.'  
Dex noted that the krogan said he had it, not that he liked it or that he was good with it. Dex felt a fresh stirring of unease. 'And you're an adequate shot?'  
The krogan shrugged. 'Knock them off their feet with a shockwave, then shoot them. If they try to get up again, charge them and hit them until they stop. It usually works.'  
Dex wasn't a shotgun expert, but he did recall hearing that the katana range was considered fairly weak. 'Do you mod the gun?' he asked.  
'An extra thermal clip,' the krogan said, with a dismissive wave of his hand.  
'Anything else?'  
'Do I look like I'm made of money, bird?'  
'That's a no, then,' Dex said. He stifled a sigh. In the Army, he'd learned to make do with what was available. If that meant finding a use for a mad krogan with a weak gun, so be it.  
Dex tried to be positive. 'So basically you're a biotic rather than a shooter?' he said.  
Krondesh nodded.  
'And ... you have combat experience?'  
Krondesh leaned forward. He tapped the desk with a digit. 'I grew up on Tuchanka,' the krogan said. There was a belligerent glint in his eyes.  
'You haven't actually answered the question,' Dex said. The krogan's attitude was starting to grate on his nerves.  
'Before I left the planet I was in three clan wars,' Krondesh said.  
'Three?' Dex blinked. It seemed the krogan had more combat experience then he did. Dex had only been in the one actual war - most of his combat experience had been anti-pirate actions along the edges of the Traverse. The one he had been in had been intense, but also fairly brief.  
Somewhere under their feet, a bubble grumbled its way through the pipework.  
'Yeah,' the krogan said. 'I know. Only three. The Kelphic Valley coast is pretty peaceful. In two of them I was just a look-out and a message-runner - too young for the front. By the third I was old enough that they let me have a gun, but I didn't get to the front as I hadn't passed the Rite. So they had me guarding some ammunition dumps. We got attacked a few times. I shot some stuff. Some stuff shot back.' The krogan shrugged. 'To be honest it was boring.' He reached up and rubbed a patch on his hump. 'I took a couple of shots, but I don't have any really interesting scars. Apparently they shot me in places where it grows back easily. Young krogan are soft and squishy - like all turians!'  
Kat smirked and emitted a nickering little laugh. It set Dex's teeth on edge.  
'And since you've been on Omega?'  
'All the street fights you could want,' the krogan said. 'I've been working as a bouncer at one of the clubs. If someone needs their arse kicking, I'll do it. But that doesn't count. They're not krogan. So it's not like it's a real fight.'  
Definitely a mad krogan, then.  
'So just to check, you don't mind running up and hitting things?'  
'No.'  
'While being shot at?'  
The krogan shrugged. 'That's what the barrier is for.' He seemed quite phlegmatic about the idea of getting shot.  
Dex nodded slowly. 'I think I have a plan, then.' He felt a sense of satisfaction as his ideas clicked into place. Outside he heard someone walking past Kat’s door, deep in conversation with someone else. Indistinct voices entered the room, as did the clicking of their boots on the metal decking.  
'Let's hear it,' Kat said. The sounds of the people outside receded as they walked away.  
'An ambush,' Dex said. 'At this collapsed hab-block. As they start filing through, Krondesh runs in and whacks them with a shockwave. That distracts them and staggers them. I'm sat up at one of these nearby windows.' He could see several possibilities in the holo. 'I drop one of my combat drones in, to give Krondesh some covering fire. Also I hit their guns with my sabotage programs. If they're as dumb as they look, they won't have secured the networking ports.' No need to mention that he had access to military-grade decryption VIs, so he could probably crack secured ports too. There was a limit to how much information Dex wanted Kat to have about his skills. 'Then while they're milling around in confusion, I get a headshot lined up on Karrean. Bang. End of story.'  
'That means you get the kill,' Krondesh said, sounding dangerous.  
Kat cut in. 'When Karrean is dead, both of you get your money and your new toys. I'm paying you to take him down, not to split hairs over who fires the final shot.'  
Dex ignored the interruptions. 'As for withdrawal, Krondesh, what I'll do next is drop a couple of homing grenades around the area. The explosions should confuse the remaining mercs, maybe stun some of them, and you have a chance to get out.'  
'Try not to drop one on me,' the krogan said. Apparently he agreed to the plan.  
'There's just one last issue,' Dex said, turning to Kat. 'Looking at where this area is, I expect the sewers are a bad plan for getting into place. We can’t go in the main way. The people on the gate might hold us up. Or they might tell Karrean when he comes through. Any ideas?'  
'Actually,' Kat said, an intent gleam in her eye, 'I've made some arrangements for you to get into position.'  
'Oh?'  
She nodded. 'Something they won't expect. You'll be coming in from outside.'  
Dex was puzzled. 'What do you mean?'  
She pulled up a new holo. It showed an skycar - no, a modified skycar. The thing had what looked like an airlock bolted onto one side. The car looked rather lopsided as a result. In addition, it appeared the cockpit seals had been modified.  
'The car's pressurised,' Kat explained. 'So it can go outside the station.'  
Dex breathed in slowly. Overhead, the air fans rattled. This was worrying. 'What use is that?' he asked. 'Karrean and co are inside.'  
Kat brought a new holo, of the habitation cylinder. A small feature was circled in blue. 'There's an old airlock down here. Believe it or not, it seems to date back to when the hab-cylinder was built. It's old enough that it's not on modern maps.'  
Dex was vaguely aware that many centuries ago, Omega had originally been built as a commercial mining facility. However, the constructors had gone bust amongst the economic chaos associated with the Rachni War. The station had been largely forgotten for a few decades. By the time galactic society had recovered enough to start caring about derelict deep-space facilities in systems with no garden worlds, it had fallen under the control of pirates. From then on, Omega had been a stateless society, a haven of lawlessness in a galaxy that desired order.  
'This airlock could be thousands of years old,' Dex said. 'How do we know it still works?'  
'We know,' Kat said. 'T'Loak's people take a dim view of anyone who tries to interfere with the hab cylinders themselves. But people do like to move goods and items back and forth without T'Loak knowing. That's where little airlocks like this one can be useful. T'Loak thinks she knows everything about this station, but she's wrong.' Kat allowed herself a smirk. 'Anyway, trust me on this, the airlock works.'  
Dex looked closely at the map. 'So if we go in through there,' he said, 'then we're less than three hundred metres out from the ambush point.'  
Kat nodded. 'If you want, you could just go straight through this service-duct here. It's two point four metres wide, so you'd both fit.' She looked down at Dex's boots. 'And apparently you're not above wandering through dodgy ducts, either.'


	5. Dressed to Impress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dex discovers that the krogan is woefully under-prepared for what's about to occur.
> 
> Krondesh is taken shopping.
> 
> Various discussions occur...

Dex stared at Krondesh.  
'You're going like that?' he asked.  
'Yes.' The krogan was folding himself into the seat opposite Dex. 'Is something the matter?'  
It was the day after the meeting. Dex had been woken by another unexpected call from Kat. She'd got word that for once, Karrean was varying his schedule. Apparently he was going down to the Lower Warrens a day ahead of schedule. Dex had got ready in a hurried and rushed to Kat's headquarters, where the modified skycar was waiting. Dex was sat in the pilot's seat of the car. The car itself was waiting on its launching pad inside the garage. The garage was a concrete cavern, lit with sterile white lights.  
Krondesh grunted as he settled into the seat. He reached out for the safety harness, pulling it over his shoulders. The buckle clicked as it locked into place. The krogan had his shotgun, and his knife, and that was the limit of his equipment.  
'No combat suit?' Dex asked.  
Krondesh blinked, as if the idea hadn't even occurred to him. 'Why would I have one of those?' He was just wearing his generic brown worker's outfit.  
Dex was already wearing his Predator armour, with the helmet already on. He had his Mantis packed in its case in the back of the car and his Phaeston was sat folded up on his lap, where he could grab it in a rush if he needed to. He had several pouches of spare thermal clips strapped to his belt and a sheathed bootknife running along one of his shins. Over his left hip Dex had a flask of water and some emergency ration bars in another pouch, just in case the mission took longer than expected. His omnitool had prefabricated a couple of homing grenades, and he hand them magnetically-attached to his upper breastplate, where he could get at them in a hurry if needed.  
As he’d noted before, preparation was essential if you wanted to come back unscathed from the Lower Warrens.  
'Krondesh, the plan involves you running into the middle of a mob and getting shot at,' Dex said.  
Krondesh shrugged. 'That's what my barrier is for.'  
Dex stared in disbelief. 'That's crazy,' he said.  
Under his violet headcrest, Krondesh glowered. 'Do I look like I'm made of money?'  
Dex was half-tempted to tell him he looked like he was made of stupid. Where was the smart krogan who’d known all about the turian patrilineal naming system and who’d seen right through his false facepaint?  
One of Kat's batarian attendants was stood nearby. He leaned in. 'You two better hurry up,' he said, tapping his headset. 'The boss wants you to move.'  
Before Dex could stop him, the batarian leaned over and tapped a button on the controls. The man nimbly ducked back as the skycar doors dropped down. With a hiss they locked shut.  
'Looks like we'd better go,' the krogan said. ‘If we don’t, they might just move us themselves.’  
In front of them, the garage doors were opening.  
Dex started up the flight controls. The mass effect drive hummed below their feet. The car glided forward, out of the bay. A short trip down the entry-tunnel and they entered one of Omega's traffic arteries.  
Before Dex could say anything else, the dashboard pinged. Kat's voice emerged from the speakers.  
'Are you under way, Dex?' she asked.  
Dex tapped the microphone on. 'Yes, we are,' he said  
'Good, because you need to move-'  
'Sorry, you're breaking up,' Dex said, toggling the microphone on and off a couple of times. 'We're clearly having comm trouble.' He tapped the call off.  
'What was that about?' Krondesh asked.  
'We don't have time for Kat's nonsense,' Dex said. 'And she does like her own voice.'  
Krondesh snorted. 'I saw that the other time I worked for her.'  
They were part of a column of skycars now, meandering through the traffic artery. Streams of vehicles passed above and below. This artery was controlled by T'Loak's organisation, so it was reasonably well-maintained and reasonably safe. Consequently, it was congested.  
The tolls must be costing Kat an arm and a leg, though. Dex's mandibles moved with amusement at the thought of how much the cost must aggravate her.  
But there was another problem. What was he to do about the krogan?  
'Krondesh,' Dex said, 'we have to talk.'  
'Do we? We could just take the trip in silence.'  
The krogan folded his arms and glowered. On either side of them, cars zipped past.  
'You aren't ready for this,' Dex said bluntly. 'That gun's not good enough. That shirt of yours won't even slow a round down.' The contrast between them couldn't be greater. Dex was ready for battle; Krondesh looked barely ready to leave the house.  
'So what?'  
Dex was tempted to say, so the mission might fail. Somehow he suspected that might not be the krogan's main priority. Bluntly, he asked, 'Do you have a death wish?'  
Krondesh blinked and actually rocked back, as if he'd been struck. 'You said what?'  
'If you're trying to get killed, you're doing an excellent job of it,' Dex said.  
The krogan was silent for a moment. Then he said, 'If I wanted to get killed, why would I be keen to get a suit of Berserker armour?'  
For a moment Dex was tempted to drop it there. But there was an obvious logical issue. He jinked the car to one side, to avoid a passing vehicle. 'That only helps you once you have it. If you get shot dead now, then it’s no good.'  
'Well as I said, I'm not made of money. Do you know how rare Geth Armoury gear is?' Dex did; the rogue Spectre Saren's misadventures from a couple of years ago had left an amount of surplus equipment floating around. Geth Armoury items occasionally surfaced on the various markets, where they sold for astronomical amounts of money.  
Krondesh continued, 'This could be the only chance I ever have to get one of those suits.'  
Another car made a close pass. The rumble of its engines grumbled into their vehicle as it pulled away.  
Dex took a breath. The explanation was superficially-reasonable, but Krondesh was holding something back. He was right; he knew it. 'But there's more,' he said. ‘And I can see that because I'm a turian.'  
'Well done, you might just be correct. You know your own species. What a dazzling insight!'  
Dex ignored the sarcasm. 'A turian. The traditional enemy of your kind.'  
'Yes, because you and your amphibious friends sterilised us,' Krondesh said. 'Funnily enough, genocide doesn't tend to attract friends.'  
'Yes,' Dex said. 'And yet, in spite of all of that, you agreed to a plan where you're in the line of fire. And you're entirely dependent on this turian to keep you alive. What if I get bored during the fight and don't take the shot? Or what if I’m actually a closet-racist fuckwit who likes getting random krogan killed? Hey, how do you even know I'm not a traitor? I could be working for Karrean to undermine Kat. Perhaps there's an evil scheme to kill off all her contractors to make her vulnerable.'  
Krondesh was staring, jaw open. Skycars rumbled past on all sides. The vibrations of their engines thrummed through the floor of the cabin.  
'Furthermore,' Dex said, 'you basically admitted the other day that your combat experience consists of beating up some drunk people outside a club. Oh, and standing around next to a few ammo dumps. And now you mention something about working for Kat once - just once - before?'  
The krogan nodded. 'Me and some other Clanless - some other krogan. We got paid to bring a shipment of guns to her from the docks, and make sure no-one interfered. It was about five months ago. Just some sniper rifles. Nothing interesting.'  
'So basically,' Dex said, 'you have no real idea what you're doing. And you don't have any of the right equipment. Which makes your enthusiasm a bit weird. And to top it all off, you just let me put you in the firing line. You didn’t even argue - and who heard of a krogan agreeing with a turian?'  
Krondesh said nothing.  
Another car overtook them with a rumble of engines.  
Dex said, 'I'm not naive enough to think you trust me. Of course you don't. You don't know me. You have no reason to. And I'm a turian. So why would you accept my plan so easily? I can only imagine that it feels some need inside you.'  
The krogan remained silent.  
'And I note that the subject of Clan affiliation seems to be a touchy one with you.' Sure enough, the krogan stiffened. Dex nodded. 'And a minute ago, you said something about being - what was it? - "Clanless"?'  
Krondesh scowled.  
'I'm going to take a wild guess,' Dex said. 'You're an outcast of some sort, aren't you? Something's happened and you can't go home. You don't really know what to do with yourself. But there's always violence. And this mad scheme wanders by. It offers you shiny toys - enough toys that you feel justified in going for it. And it's dangerous - dangerous enough that it could just kill you. But that's okay, because that's partly what you want, isn't it?'  
Krondesh was silent.  
Dex pulled the skycar out of the traffic stream. Ignoring the blaring horns he steered the vehicle down to a landing pad on one side of the artery. Nearby was a public exit, the door lit up with flickering holographic signs.  
'What are you doing?' Krondesh asked as they settled to the ground.  
Dex tapped a key. The skycar’s engines fell silent.  
'We need to make a decision,' Dex said. 'Do we go ahead with this or not?'  
He tapped another key. With a hiss, the car doors unsealed.  
'Krondesh,' he said, 'I don't particularly want to be part of your suicide pact.'  
'Fuck you, bird.'  
If the plan didn't go ahead, Dex wouldn't get the Black Widow. Still, if the krogan got shot dead, the plan might fail, and Dex might lose his chance. No money, no gun, a live Karrean and an angry Kat. The worst possible combination. With a groan, the doors raised themselves. The outside air spilled in. It was warm, dry and had a scent of engine oils and hot metal. The air was filled with the roar of engines and the zooming of skycars as vehicles sped through the sky mere yards above their heads.  
The krogan made no move to exit the car.  
'Well?' Dex asked. 'Do you want in or out?'  
'What are you trying to do?' the krogan asked.  
There was a problem beyond the issue of the Widow. Dex was trying to pretend pure self-interest, but the truth was that he felt some responsibility. Cat had effectively put him in charge here. Although the krogan wouldn’t like it, Krondesh was effectively Dex’s subordinate for the mission. Dex just didn’t quite feel comfortable with using someone else purely as a disposable tool.  
It was part of that whole problem of trying to be a guard rather than a merc.  
But Dex wasn’t going to tell the krogan that. So instead he shrugged. 'I was offered a nice new sniper rifle. I'd like it. But there's no point going any further if you're just trying to get yourself dead.'  
The krogan appeared to be weighing something up. Finally, he said, 'I commented on your paint. You haven't said anything about mine.'  
'It means something? I just thought you were some deviant individual.'  
The krogan actually seemed amused by that. 'Arguably both,' he said.  
'So it actually means something?'  
The krogan nodded. 'We're supposed to take a rite of passage, when we become adults,' he said. 'It connects us to our natures, grounds us into our clans. That's when the others recognise us. When we prove that we can fight. Tuchanka is a harsh mother, and she has no use for those who can't defend her own. Or that's what the Rite is supposed to do.'  
'Supposed to do?'  
Krondesh looked off into the distance. He reached up and poked at a shallow scar on one side of his face. 'Let's just say in my case the Rite ended up being more of a wrong. The paint on my crest - it's a tradition in my clan. In the clan I'm from, I mean. They do this when they renounce their claim. Their claim to you, I mean. This is the paint of the Clanless.'  
'They threw you out,' Dex said. He'd heard some stories about krogan adulthood rites. The details varied by clan, but they were always at minimum a test of endurance and fortitude, and usually they were violent. 'But it can't have been that bad. You're alive.'  
Sudden ferocity burned in the krogan's eyes. 'You know nothing, bird,' he rasped. 'If I'd died, they'd have recognised me as a warrior. I'd be dead, but I'd be a man! Instead I was the one that lived. The only one. So they branded me as a coward!'  
'So you're trying to make yourself dead now,' Dex said.  
Krondesh was silent.  
'You assume that you're the one who's at fault,' Dex said at last. 'How do you know that?'  
The krogan stared. Now he looked confused. Apparently he'd been expecting some other response.  
'I don't know the details,' Dex said. 'But you're clearly brave and you're clearly smart. Have you considered the possibility that you were dumped in over your head? Are you sure that you were prepared properly? Trained? Dare I even ask about equipment? I'm guessing the answer's no. If it's not a fair test, then it's meaningless.'  
'The Rite is about survival, bird,' the krogan said. 'Not fairness.'  
'Well if it's about survival then it's pretty obvious you passed,' Dex said. 'And if your in-laws couldn't recognise the obvious, then to hell with them.'  
He appeared to have short-circuited the krogan in some way. Krondesh looked puzzled. The overt hostility faded from his voice. 'So why are you here, bird?'  
Dex shrugged. 'I'd like that sniper rifle, and being unemployed on Omega is a bad plan. Plus I can't see any downside to killing off Karrean.'  
'Why are we having this conversation, then?'  
'I'm only interested in going through with this if it has any chance of success,' Dex said. 'There's just no point otherwise. If it's to work, I need to be reasonably sure you won't just go off on a suicidal rampage or something.'  
'Well how will you convince yourself of that?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex looked at the krogan. He made a snap decision.  
'We're going to take a quick diversion,' Dex said. 'If you help me, it won't take long, and we'll still make our appointment with Karrean.'  
'What is this diversion?'  
'I'm taking you shopping.'

* * *

A few minutes later and they were in one of the Gozu markets. Dex parked the skycar in an inconspicuous bay in a quiet backstreet. He knew the gang who ran the bays there - they were reliable and discreet, as long as they were adequately-paid. Dex made sure he tipped the gang attendant generously enough that the woman would have no urge to cause trouble. He told her they'd be back shortly, then he led Krondesh out of the backstreet and onto the main strip. They were enveloped by noise and surrounded by crowds of shoppers as they entered the main area. It was peak business hour here.  
He led Krondesh over to a shop frontage marked IDLISH'S GOODS in big neon letters.  
Idlish's was a weapons fab-shop Dex had dealt with a few times before. Idlish was a salarian merchant, with links to one of the big trading cartels from Nunavai. As he led Krondesh into the relative cool and quiet of the shopping, the krogan saw the salarian behind the counter. The krogan glared at Dex.  
'You expect me to deal with a frog?'  
'Yes,' Dex said. 'This is your chance to demonstrate your reliability.'  
The krogan glowered, but he acquiesced. With evident bad grace, he stomped after Dex as the turian walked up to the counter.  
'Hello, Idlish,' Dex said.  
The salarian's nictitating membranes slid over his eyes. 'Dex,' he said. 'An unexpected pleasure.' He looked at the krogan, but didn't mention him.  
Dex called up is omnitool. 'I apologise for denying you the fun of haggling, but we're in a hurry,' he said. 'Here's the available budget. What's the best combat suit this can buy - for my krogan associate here, I mean?'  
Dex dialled up his credit-balance, factoring out what was needed to pay the month's remaining bills. A final number settled on the holoscreen. He showed it to the salarian.  
Idlish peered at the numbers. 'I do have a few things below that,' he said. 'but they're all light to medium-class suits. And none of them will leave you much change.'  
The krogan looked baffled. 'Wait - you're buying me a hardsuit?'  
'No,' Dex said, 'I'm buying one myself, which I intend to let you use for a few hours. Once we're done with our little job, you won't need it anymore. I can sell the suit on the second-hand market and get back some of the money.'  
'Probably not more than half,' Idlish noted. Used suits rarely fit properly, and can be damaged. Also not always cleaned properly. Smelly, you know. People won't pay as much.'  
'I'm aware of that,' Dex said.  
'Then you're running a loss,' Krondesh said, sounding puzzled.  
'No I'm not. This way the mission has a better chance of succeeding. That way I'm more likely to get my payment and my new toy. Think of this as a business investment, Krondesh.'  
The krogan nodded. 'That makes some sense,' he allowed.  
More keys rattled. Idlish said, 'I'll need your associate's measurements. Just to be sure that we've got something in stock that will fit.'  
Dex looked at Krondesh. ‘This is where you need to co-operate,’ he said. Did the krogan know a good deal when he saw one? Was there any residual sense inside that skull, or was Krondesh as suicidal as he’d sounded earlier?  
The krogan sighed, and volunteered his vital statistics.  
'Oh,' Idlish sounded excited.  
'Oh?' Dex asked.  
'Of the ones in your budget range, the best is an Explorer-brand suit,' Idlish explained. 'Medium armour class. I didn't think your friend would fit, but he will. Almost exactly. It was fabricated for another customer, but they never turned up to pay for it. It's been sat in the store room for nearly a month.'  
'Okay,' Dex said. 'Done.'  
'Excellent!' Idlish rubbed his hands together, excited by the idea of credits. He called in one of his assistants, and told the younger salarian to go and find the item.  
The assistant vanished back into the store room.  
Dex looked back at Idlish. 'You mentioned change,' he said. 'This might be an optimistic question, but are there any shotgun mods that change could cover? Suitable for a generic Katana, I mean?'  
Idlish knew better than to argue with a willing customer. He looked down. Long, thin fingers rattled on a keyboard. 'I can squeeze in a Level Two barrel extension,' he said. 'Just barely. From the Elkoss Combine AV28 line.'  
Dex nodded, doing a quick bit of mental arithmetic. It would give Krondesh's gun an extra ten percent or so on the kinetic energy of the blast. Not a huge amount, but it might help. 'Okay,' he said. 'Throw that in too.'  
Idlish nodded. He turned and walked over to a set of drawers near the counter. Things rattled and clacked as he hunted around through the drawers. A moment later he returned with the barrel.  
Dex waved Krondesh over. A quick check confirmed that the barrel fitted onto his shotgun.  
The door behind the counter banged open. Idlish's assistant returned, dragging a large crate. Idlish looked at it and nodded. 'Let's just check the fit,' he said as the assistant set the crate down beside the counter. Idlish said to Krondesh, 'Here's a bag you can put your other clothes in. I'll throw that in for free.' He handed the krogan a tired-looking large pastic bag.  
'Wait.' Krondesh stared at the bag clutched in his hand. 'You want me to undress?'  
Idlish looked puzzled. 'Do you have any other means to try on the armour?'  
'Relax,' Dex said. 'All three of us are aliens. We won't have any idea what we're looking at.'  
Dex had never seen a krogan look nervous before. Nonetheless, Krondesh followed instructions.  
The next few minutes were embarrassing for the krogan. Those minutes did however serve to confirm that the Explorer suit fitted him. At the end of them, Krondesh's head was emerging from the collar and hump-cowl of the off-white and dark blue armour. He had the helmet gripped in one hand and the plastic bag in the other. One of the legs of his ordinary clothes flopped out of the bag. Krondesh's improved shotgun was resting on the magnetic clasps on the back of the suit, folded up in its carrying configuration.  
Feeling muted relief, Dex authorised the credit transfer.  
Idlish was all but salivating as the credits hit his account. 'Always good to do business with you,' he said to Dex.  
'Thanks,' Dex said. He nodded to Krondesh. 'Let's get out of here.'  
As they walked back to the skycar, Krondesh said, 'So, do you think I'm reliable now?'  
'Maybe. I guess we'll find out soon enough.'  
They reached the skycar bay. Dex gave the attendant a last, small tip with some of his very small reserve of remaining spare credits. Then he and Krondesh entered the bay and climbed into the car. Dex tapped a key and the doors folded down. They hissed as the seals engaged.  
The krogan dropped his bag of clothing into the footwell. He looked down at his new helmet, then shrugged. He lifted it up and fastened it into place over his wedge-shaped head.  
In a conversational tone, with his voice a little muffled, Krondesh said, 'I could just kill you and take all your stuff, you know.'  
Inside his own helmet, Dex snorted. He knew an empty threat when he heard one.  
'Correction,' he said. 'You could try.' He started up the skycar's propulsion system. They lifted off the pad. 'For that matter, you could have tried that on Kat.'  
Krondesh nodded. 'I said that to her when she showed me the armoury. She dropped a stasis bubble on me.'  
'Nasty. How long did she keep you locked up?'  
'Nearly a minute,' Krondesh said. 'I couldn't breathe.' Stasis fields could lock a victim's chest in place, preventing their diaphragm from moving. Most biotics couldn't hold a target long enough for them to suffocate, but the experience was disorienting. Usually once a stasis-lock dissipated, the victim would immediately collapse.  
‘I take it you didn’t make any more threats,’ Dex said.  
The krogan shrugged. ‘I’m not stupid. How are we doing for getting our target?’  
They were re-entering a traffic artery. Dex looked at the time.  
'We're running behind,' he said. The diversion to Idlish's had taken longer than he'd expected. 'I'm going to take us on a slightly different route than the one Kat gave us.'  
The hunt was on.


	6. Building Momentum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dex and Krondesh narrowly avoid one problem, only to run straight into another. An unscheduled EVA happens; angular momentum is conserved. Sir Isaac Newton, still the deadliest SOB in space, takes aim at a turian and a krogan. Survival depends on an unusual use of biotic fields, and a battered old assault rifle.
> 
> And then Dex slips up and lets some important backstory out…

Omega was a vast structure. The enormous space station was actually larger than the broken asteroid from which it sprouted. The oldest, central sections of the station were the eezo mines, which dug deep into the physical structure of the asteroid itself.   
Slightly newer, but still ancient, were the old habitation cylinders. These huge pressure vessels were air-tight hollow metal cylinders, packed closely together. The districts of Omega were stacked inside these, running up and down, inside and out. Around the ancient cylinders, a series of accretions had developed, a sort of pressurised shanty-town of pods and domes and miscellaneous protrusions. The hab-cylinders were all anchored by massive support columns, which ran all the way from the tip of each cylinder and onwards, deep into the asteroidal bedrock itself.  
Transportation between cylinders was a complicated business. You couldn't simply walk across - there was, after all, no air. The cylinders were linked together by a web of transit-tubes, some carrying cars, some trains and some carrying raw materials like water and processed air and others carrying waste products like sewage or rubbish. This was another cornerstone of the power of T'Loak's organisation: she controlled the air plants, the water works and the central treatment facilities. In addition, most of the transit-tubes were under her organisation's sway.  
In a real sense, Omega's nominal anarchy was a laughable fraud. T'Loak could declare herself Absolute God-Queen any time she liked, and there would be nothing anyone could do about it. Sahrabarik was a faint, cool red dwarf star and its planets were dry and lifeless - in the event of Omega's un-leadership going bad, there wasn't even anywhere to run to. Her rule survived because of the enormous financial resources behind her organisation, her control over the basic fabric of the station itself and also the awkward fact that all the plausible alternatives were worse. None of the many merc gangs could be trusted and no sane government would want responsibility for Omega's deep well of social problems. It would be an exaggeration to say that public opinion actively supported T'Loak; rather it was more the case that the Omegan public's opinion of every other contender was justifiably-low.  
At this moment in time, Dex was busily muttering under his breath, cursing the ineptitude and inadequacy of T'Loak's people.  
'Are we there yet?' Krondesh asked, his voice dulled by the helmet.  
Stuck in a skycar with a travel-impatient krogan. Great. 'No of course we aren't,' Dex said. 'Look out the spirits-damned window. We haven’t moved since the last time you asked!'  
Krondesh made a noise. It might have been laughter. 'Are we there yet?'  
Dex had to swallow a growl. Baited by a spirits-damned krogan. Wonderful.  
The skycar was floating in a lengthy tailback. Under the route given to them by Kat, they were supposed to enter one of the bigger inter-cylinder transit tubes, then peel off from the traffic stream and take the car outside, through one of the emergency locks. Dex had mixed feelings about the idea of leaving the confines of the station, but the car's hardware, engines and navigational system seemed to be adequate for the task.  
What none of them had counted on was the Omegan traffic. The congestion along the artery was total. Nothing was moving. The car had been sat here, still, for more then fifteen minutes. The krogan was getting visibly-restless.  
To forestall any more complaints from Krodesh, Dex reached out for the dashboard.   
'Let's see if there's any traffic news,' he said, tapping a key to set the car's VI to scan the local airways for broadcasts.  
With a crackle from the speakers, an announcer's voice filled the cabin. ‘...reports are coming in of an event at the Gozu-Jemis Tube. Traffic has been brought to a standstill and the pressure seals have closed on the tube. Eyewitnesses say there has been a big explosion...'  
'What the hell?' The krogan sounded offended.  
Dex groaned. 'Oh no!' From the sounds of it, some kind of merc-band gang-fight was kicking off. Of all the times for it to happen on, it had to be now! ‘Fucking merc gangs. Why now?’  
'Hey,' Krondesh said, 'it looks like there's smoke out there.'  
'Where?' Dex peered over the dashboard.  
'Up ahead,' the krogan said, pointing.  
Ahead of them the traffic-tube curved as it approached the Gozu-Jemis Tube. The actual tube entrance was out of sight, around the bend. But there was a definite haze of smoke spilling out.  
Just then the shrieking sirens of private ambulances became apparent. One of them swept past, emergency lights flashing, accompanied by a swarm of security drones.  
'...Aria T'Loak's office has put out a statement demanding the head of whoever damaged the tunnel,' the news announcer was continuing. 'This is an excellent business opportunity for any bounty hunters in the area, as Aria has offered a generous reward...'  
'If we get found with guns,' Krondesh said, 'do you think people might get the wrong idea?'  
The krogan had a point.  
'You could be right,' Dex said. 'Wait, I have an idea...'   
He called up a mapping VI. A holographic display bloomed over the dashboard, showing their current location within the habitat. Dex manipulated it, zooming in on a different section. 'Look here,' he said. 'A few streets away there's another access point for the outer surface. It's big. We can get the skycar through the airlock.'  
'All right,' the krogan rumbled. 'Let's go there.'  
Dex turned the skycar around. There was more space behind them than in front. With a bit of work, it was possible to thread back toward one of the exit-tubes from the artery. Moments later and they were finding their way through Omega's network of traffic-capillaries, toward the very skin of the station itself.  
The access point Dex had identified was a maintenance airlock, used by the work crews who had to go out onto the station's outer shell. Dex didn't envy them their jobs. The work was dangerous and also badly-paid - anyone who could possibly find any other kind of job did so. The surface of the station was cold, dark and exposed to meteoroids and cosmic radiation. Centuries of shanty-town accretion had left many areas of the hab-cylinder surfaces poorly mapped. Dex had never had any cause to go outside before, so he had little idea what to expect.  
The airlock was a gloomy, industrial space. However, it was clean and in good repair. After Dex settled the skycar into the bay, he checked the seals on the cabin and the air recirculation systems. Everything seemed okay. Engine function was normal, there were no fluctuations in the mass fields and the navigational VI reported a clean systems check.  
Still, Dex felt uneasy. Going outside - this was dangerous. Was it really worth it, just for a nice new sniper rifle?  
He looked over at Krondesh. 'We're nearly ready,' Dex said, 'and the car says it's happy.'  
'You don't sound convinced.'  
'Have you ever done an EVA before?'  
'No. You?'  
Dex had done some EVA training in the army, but the most recent of those courses had been eight years ago. He said, 'No recent experience either. Might be a good idea to keep the helmets on - just in case.'  
'Okay. Spares me looking at your ugly turian face.' The krogan was surly.  
Dex sent the start-up signal to the airlock's VI. The usual alarm-cycle started, then it fell quiet as the doors behind them ground shut. If anyone was still inside the airlock at this point, as far as the alarms were concerned, they deserved whatever happened next. The chamber was filled with the roar of the pumps as they started pulling the air out. The volume dropped as the room emptied, but Dex could still feel their thrum through the floor of the car. Finally silence descended on the chamber and the thrum of the pumps stopped.  
Quietness surrounded them.  
Dex became very aware of the internal noises of the car, the gentle whirring of cooling-fans amongst the electronics, the slight hiss of air through the ventilation systems and the sounds of his own breathing inside the helmet. In front of them, soundlessly, the outer doors of the airlock parted.  
'Well,' Dex said, 'looks like we're ready to go. The car's navigation VI has the route programmed into it. We shouldn't need to do too much.'  
This was just as well; Dex was a soldier, not a deep-space navigator.  
The car lifted off and slid out through the door. They were outside the station.  
A few metres beyond the door, their weight vanished.  
'We just left Gozu's mass field,' Dex noted. He was securely strapped into his seat, so he didn't go floating off.  
Next to him, Krondesh was less lucky. The krogan swore as a careless movement bounced him out of his seat. His clothes-bag followed, the worksuit spilling out in slow motion. Krondesh tried to grab at it, and accidentally knocked himself into a slow spin.  
Dex had to choke back a snort of laughter. He reached out and grabbed one of the krogan's shoulder-guards. The force of Krondesh's spin jerked him to a stop. It also yanked Dex's arm and shoulder, and pulled him hard against the straps. They creaked.  
'There you go,' he said.  
The krogan grunted. He managed to push himself back into his chair, and get the safety harness belted down. Then he started grabbing up his old clothes and stuffing them back into the bag. He shoved it under the seat, where it would hopefully stay put.  
'We're outside,' Krondesh said, peering out of the canopy.  
They were. Above them was the battered, cratered surface of the asteroid itself. Descending from it like iron stalactites were the habitation cylinders. Secondary pressure-vessels were clustered around them and stuck out of them. Transport tubes threaded between them like linear metal blood vessels. Here and there, little lights glittered - windows, warning lamps, way-markers, the variety was enormous.  
Off to one side the red dwarf Sahrabarik was a tiny, pale pink disc. Its light caught on drifts of interstitial dust from the asteroid and microscopic debris-fragments from the station, glittering and sparkling in weak columns of pink light. Off to the other side, in the narrow gaps between the crowded columns, stars could be seen. Out here, with no planetary atmosphere to blur them, they were steady and sharp, tiny gleaming points against the deep and black sky.  
'Wow,' the krogan said.  
The VI beeped and hummed as it started up. Dex felt his weight return and shift direction as the car's mass fields engaged. The vehicle turned and began to move relative to the station. Beside them was a curved surface, encrusted with aerials, dishes, heat exchangers and other miscellaneous machines. It was sliding past with increasing speed as they accelerated.  
'Hey,' Krondesh said. 'Look! Back there. The tube's properly screwed.'  
They'd just passed the Gozu tube. One side of it had been ripped wide open. Jagged metal beams curved and torn hull-plates stuck out from its side. Fitful streamers of smoke were still leaking out into the vacuum, and deep inside Dex could see some ruddy fire-lights as leaking oxygen burned away.  
'Spirits,' he said. 'That's some serious damage.'  
'Lucky we were late,' Krondesh agreed. 'Obviously you should buy me stuff more often.'  
Krondesh had a point. If they'd been in the tube when it blew, they'd almost certainly be dead by now. They were several hundred metres away from the Gozu-Jemis Tube, but Dex could still see the tiny, tumbling wrecks of skycars. They'd either been caught in the blast itself or sucked out with the subsequent pressure wave, before the emergency doors had clamped shut on the compromised tube. From the looks of it, none of the cars had been pressurised.  
For a moment Dex wondered if they should drop the assignment and try to help. But he realised that anyone in those cars would probably already be dead. Anyway he could see various other vehicles converging on the area. It looked like an emergency response of sorts was under way. There were charities who did this sort of thing, and also some insurance companies. Plus there was T'Loak's organisation - while saving lives wasn't her personal priority, by all accounts she knew how to use an opportunity for good public relations. If there were somehow any survivors from the tunnel, they would probably be found soon enough.  
'Wonder if Kat's heard about this yet,' the krogan added.  
'I'd better let Kat know where we are,' Dex said. 'Good point. She might think we're dead.'  
He called up his omnitool, routing a call through the car's transmitter.  
Kat's face appeared moments later.  
'What?' she said, scowling. ‘Who is it?’  
Dex realised that with the helmet on, she probably didn't recognise him. 'Kat,' he said. 'It's me, Dex.'  
Kat gawped. She looked like she'd had an electric shock. 'WHAT? You're alive? But how-' Then her features locked themselves down into stillness. 'I mean, that's a relief but a surprise. I thought you were dead. We just got news that some fucks blew up the tube.'  
'Yeah,' Dex said. 'We were running a bit late, so Krondesh and I weren't in it. We've seen the damage though. Nasty.'  
'Yeah.' Kat shook her head. 'Wouldn't want to be whoever planted those charges when T'Loak catches up with them.'  
Dex nodded. 'Truth there. Anyway, we found a new way out of Gozu. We're still en route.'  
Kat pursed her lips. 'Hm, okay. We might have to change the schedule, then.' An idea seemed to occur to her. 'I know. Let me just send you some data.'  
'What for?' Dex asked.  
'A new optimised route,' she said. 'The quickest time down to the bay in the Lower Warrens.'  
Behind his visor, Dex blinked. She already had one of those worked out? Well that was convenient.  
'Sending you the code now,' Kat said.  
The code? Dex blinked. The navigation VI's input was generically-formatted text files, not things with executable code. What did they need code for?  
'Uh, Kat-' he said.  
She reached out to something, and her face vanished. SIGNAL LOSS, his omnitool declared. What? She'd hung up?  
The dashboard beeped as her code uploaded itself.  
There was a bang.  
A flash of light. Ears ringing in pain. A jolt. A thunderous roar, choking off quickly to silence. A rush surging past him. A buffeting, like a wave. Dex was slammed against his safety harness. The breath was knocked out of him. He felt dizzy. Gasping, he looked up.  
The sky was spinning. No, the skycar was spinning. This was not good!  
It was dark in the cabin. The dashboard was blank and still. The power was off. The deadly silence of hard vacuum embraced them.  
'Status report!' Dex barked, instantly falling back on old instincts.  
'Stuff you, bird,' the krogan said, his voice crackling over the suit radio. If he was being sarcastic that presumably meant Krondesh was alive and okay.  
Dex twisted around in his seat. A quick glance revealed that the krogan was fine. His armoured bulk was still strapped into his seat. A glance behind them revealed bigger problems.  
The back section of the skycar was missing. He could see stars and hab-cylinders. And torn, jagged metal and plastic. And a big absence where there should be an engine block. The airlock was still there, but the inner door was gone and the outer one had been wrenched open, bent out at a weird angle.  
'Spirits,' Dex said. 'A bomb.'  
That rush he'd felt must have been the air, flooding out.  
'Karrean,' the krogan said. 'Someone must have tipped him off!'  
'That upload Kat sent,' Dex mused. 'It must have been compromised somehow. Karrean's friends must have hacked it. Put something nasty in it.'  
'So it's Kat's fault,' Krondesh said.  
'No, she wasn't to know,' Dex said. But he felt more unease. Surely Kat had some decent data security?  
'What do we do now?' the krogan asked.  
'We need to figure out some way to get back on the station,' Dex said. 'My suit has about two hours' air.' Dex was just running off of the in-helmet re-breather. If he'd been expecting a lengthy EVA, he'd have brought a spare air tank to supplement his own re-circulated and de-carbonised exhalations. 'You?'  
'I have...' the krogan paused for a moment, consulting a VI interface, 'forty minutes. Crap.'  
Dex found himself wishing he'd spent more money on the krogan's suit.  
'Okay,' he said. 'Well, I guess we know what the situation is, then.'  
'Yeah,' Krondesh said. 'We're screwed.'  
‘Let me see if I can reach anyone on the comm,’ Dex said. He called up his omnitool and selected the general broadcast option. ‘Hello. This Skycar AR31QSY. We’ve had an accident and are drifting. Can anyone help? Over?’  
The only answer he received was static. Apparently no-one was listening.  
‘Okay, that didn’t work. Let’s see if we can restart the car.’  
He reached for the dashboard.  
‘Don’t bother,’ Krondesh said. ‘We’re missing the back of the car. No power.’  
Dex leaned back with a sigh. ‘Okay, we may have to try something a bit crazy, then. We certainly can’t stay here.’ There was a glimmering of a plan lurking in his mind.  
‘What are you thinking?’ the krogan asked.  
'Krondesh,' Dex said, 'this is a serious and non-flippant question, but are you an arts man or a science man?'  
The krogan was silent for a minute. The bulbous white and blue helmet turned to point at Dex. Dex had to suppose that he was being scrutinised again. The krogan said, 'I came to Omega because I wanted to read Galactic History and Politics at Kima College. But when I got here I was mugged and they took all my credits. So I couldn't afford the fees for the entrance exam. And I've been stuck here ever since.'  
Krondesh had come here to go to university? And a krogan getting mugged?  
'University?' Dex asked. 'Why here?'  
'Have you tried being a krogan and wanting an education?' Krondesh asked, something dangerous in his voice. 'You should. You might learn something. Most of the real universities won't even talk to you.'  
'Okay, you're an arts man,' Dex said. 'That's fine, but it means we're going to have to hope I get my sums right.'  
He reached down and picked up the Phaeston.  
'Sums? What good are they?'  
Dex looked out ahead of them before he answered. The skycar was still moving parallel to the habitation-cylinder below. They weren't moving that fast - the engines had been blown out before they'd achieved a very great acceleration.  
'Omega and everything in it,' he mused, 'is in orbit around Sahrabarik. So are we, right now. We still have that momentum. But we also have a forward component that's taking us up relative to the endcap, away from the station.'  
'So we need to move back,' the krogan said. 'Throw something out the window to push us back. Like a nice plump turian, perhaps.'  
'You'd probably like that but it wouldn't help,' Dex said. 'Trying to move us back might also push us onto the wrong orbit, if the shove is off-centre. We're spinning too, remember.'  
'I can hardly forget,' the krogan said. 'All this spinning is making me sick.'  
'First thing is first,' Dex said. 'We need to loose the spin.'  
'How?' the krogan asked.  
Dex fingered his assault rifle. 'We could climb out of the car and hang onto each other. I could fire my Phaeston off and if I timed the bursts right, we could kill our spin. But it's not strong enough to unspin the entire car.'  
Damn. This was a problem. The spin was going to get them killed unless they could stop it. Then another thought occurred to Dex. 'Krondesh. You said you know how to make biotic shockwaves.' A shockwave was a linear blast of dark energy, a violent wobble in the local gravity-field that could knock people off their feet.  
'Yes.'  
'I know you said it wasn't your best skill, but how strong is it?'  
'How strong? Well the second time anyone tried to mug me, I sent four of them flying. Two vorcha, a batarian and a hanar. Sent them hurtling away, guns and all.' Krondesh chuckled. 'After the first time I took some self-defence classes. That's when I learnt to do shockwaves and barriers. If I'd had those skills on Tuchanka...' The krogan shrugged. 'Well, I didn't, so no matter.'  
His shockwave had bowled over four fully-equipped attackers. That implied it was powerful enough to shift up to two to three hundred kilograms of mass. Dex looked behind them. The engine and drive-apparatus were the heaviest and bulkiest parts of the skycar, and they were gone. The normal mass of one of these things was about a tonne. Minus all that dead mass ... perhaps this would be enough?  
'Okay,' he said. 'When you fire off a shockwave, I assume it conserves momentum?'  
'You have to brace yourself,' Krondesh agreed. 'Krogan can do it with our legs. Aliens have to push a biotic field out behind them, to cancel the reaction. I once saw a human try to throw a shockwave without bracing. Turns out she just slammed herself into a wall. And she didn't get to make that mistake a second time.'  
Dex had to suppress a shudder. Biotics amongst turians were rare - the Hierarchy regulated eezo-usage very closely, so the sorts of mass industrial accidents seen elsewhere were infrequent on turian colonies. Many turians were uneasy around biotics, although Dex had worked with Cabal specialists a few times, so he had more exposure than most. Still, the truth was that he was more comfortable with his gun than with biotic powers.  
'Okay,' he said. 'I think I can see a way for both of us to get out of this alive.'  
'Go on.'  
'First of all, I need you to lean out of the airlock.'  
'Why not the back? There's a big hole there.'  
'We're spinning clockwise, I think. I need you to fire off a shockwave pointed anticlockwise. If you do it right, that will cancel our spin. But if you do it out the hole in the back, then we're spinning on the y axis as well as the x. And then we're doubly screwed.'  
The car's spin suggested that the explosion had started in one of the left-hand-side mass effect generators. Presumably it had torn off the back section of the car by putting pressure along a stress fracture in the bodywork. Really, they had been extremely lucky that they were just spinning, rather than tumbling uncontrollably.  
'Okay,' Krondesh said. 'So I get a damn good hold on the car and fire off my shockwave. It kicks back, we stop spinning. Then what?'  
'We climb out of the car and hang onto each other,' Dex said. 'You fire off your shockwave again, pointing out. That cancels a bit of our orbital velocity.'  
'What? Are you made? We'd fall into Sahrabarik!'  
Dex called up his omnitool and started tapping keys. 'At this distance from Sahrabarik, the local orbital speed is ten point four seven kilometres per second. Is your shockwave really that fast?'  
The krogan was silent. Dex nodded and carried on, 'Eventually, yes we would fall into Sahrabarik, but it would be years or decades down the line. We haven't got enough air, water or power in our suits to care about that.'  
'So what good is slowing us down?'  
'We slow down, Omega doesn't.' Des raised his assault rifle, pointing it toward the nearest hab cylinder. 'Let me just take a range-sighting.' He paused. 'Fourteen hundred and sixteen point oh two metres. A bit under a mile out. Okay. If your shockwave slows us down, it does nothing to Omega. The station overtakes us.'  
'Oh.' Enlightenment was audible in the krogan's voice. 'As the station catches up, we grab on!'  
'Yes. And it's actually better if you just cancel a little of our momentum, so it'll be easier for us to hold on.'  
'My shockwave isn't too precise,' Krondesh said.  
'I thought so. That's what my Phaeston is for. If I find we're off course on the way in, I can use bursts of fire to nudge us back. Action and reaction.'  
The krogan nodded. 'Okay. This sounds workable.'  
'But there's one catch.'  
'Yes?'  
'We're still moving forward. If we take too long, we'll overshoot the end of the hab cylinder.'  
'Shit.'  
'Yes. We'd better get started.'  
A few minutes later, the krogan had stuck himself halfway out of the airlock. He had his legs braced against the inner frame. He needed one hand for the mnemonic gesture, but the other was clamped firmly on one of the handles near the hatch.  
'Ready?' Dex asked him.  
'Ready,' Krondesh said.  
'Okay.' Dex was watching their angle carefully. If possible he wanted the blast to nudge the car back toward the hab cylinder as well as just still its spin. The less empty gap they had to leap across, the better. 'NOW!'  
Dex could see Krondesh's bottom half. He saw the krogan twitch -  
The car jerked.  
The spasmodic motion slammed Dex against his harness. He felt his stomach lurch. For a moment, his head swirled. He felt dizzy.  
The disorientation passed. 'Krondesh? Are you okay?'  
'Yeah, still here, bird.' The krogan was climbing back into the main cabin.  
Dex looked out the canopy. 'Thank the spirits - we're not spinning anymore!'  
The sky was still. The stars no longer wheeled around them.  
'All right,' Dex said. 'No time like the present. Let's move.'  
They carefully climbed out through the airlock, onto the outside of the car. The grips on the undersides of their boots held onto the surface, so they didn't drift off. The sky was silent around them and Omega loomed large around them. The scene was lit with the weak and watery pinkish light of Sahrabarik.  
'I can see the end of the cylinder,' Krondesh said. Relative to the cratered endcap above them, he was looking down.  
'No time to hesitate, then' Dex said. 'I'm going to need both hands to get the Phaeston aimed properly.' He stood right in front of the krogan, and turned round so he was facing away. 'I believe you need one hand for the gesture thing?'  
'Yes.'  
'Good, because you're going to have to hang onto me with the other one.'  
'You're telling me I have to hug a turian?'  
Dex looked at the station. Relatively-slow as they were, the hab cylinder was sliding past faster than he'd like. 'If you want to live,' he said.  
An arm closed over his chest. A vice-like pressure squashed Dex against the krogan's breastplate. Dex was half-convinced he heard his own armour creak as the krogan grabbed him.  
'Okay,' Krondesh said. 'Try not to squirm too much. Is this tight enough?'  
'Probably,' Dex agreed.  
'Oh - one thing.'  
'Yes?'  
'If any holos of this turn up on the extranet, I will hunt you down and kill you. Just so we're clear.'  
'Heard and understood,' Dex said.  
'Let's get this over with before it gets any more embarrassing,' the krogan said.  
'Okay. We need to get positioned so that the cylinder is directly above us.' That way the shockwave would push them backwards, against the direction of Omega's orbit.   
With Krondesh hanging onto him, Dex and the krogan executed an awkward shuffle until they were stood in what Dex judged to be the right position. Pushing the Phaeston under one arm, he quickly checked his figures on the omnitool. He then took another range-finding with the Phaeston's laser-sight.  
'We're ready to go,' he reported.  
The krogan moved his other arm.  
A hammer-blow of force slammed them into the sky. For a moment, Dex thought he was going to be wrenched free, but Krondesh's grip was unrelenting. The crippled half-skycar fell away from them.  
'Hey,' Dex said, 'I didn't see any biotic corona.'  
'No,' Krondesh agreed. 'You wouldn't. There's no air out here for the charges to ionise. So no pretty lightshows.'  
The hab-cylinder was getting closer. Dex took a sighting. 'Okay,' he said, 'we're off-centre. I need to fire a burst.'  
He lined up his Phaeston and fired. He felt the gun kick back reassuringly against his hands and then-  
They started spinning.  
'Oh fuck,' Dex said. He'd completely forgotten that the thrust from the gun might torque them. It was being held off-centre, after all. He had it in his hands, but the centre of mass of their little dynamical system was probably somewhere in Krondesh's stomach. And the motion was already making Dex's stomach do flip-flops. In the skycar, it had only been the outside whirling around them. Here, it was everything.  
'Idiot bird,' the krogan growled. 'Do you want to make me puke on you?'  
Dex was already feeling dizzy. 'Okay, it's okay, I can kill this spin,' he said.  
They were turning anticlockwise. Dex was having trouble timing just how fast they were turning, but he'd fired off one quick burst, so if he fired off another quick burst from the opposite side...  
The Phaeston jerked silently in his hands again.  
The spin didn't entirely stop, but it slowed. Before they'd been turning once every few seconds. Now, to judge from the slight drift on the scenery, it was more like once every ten minutes. Good.  
Then Dex looked ahead of them.  
'Damn,' Dex said. 'That didn't work.'  
The hab cylinder looked less like a cylinder and more like a curved floor. Omega was catching them up, but they were still off course. The floor seemed more obviously curved on one side than the other.  
'We're coming in at an angle,' he said.  
'I can see that,' Krondesh said.  
'If we hit the surface at too much of an angle, it'll be difficult to grab hold of anything,' Dex said. 'We might bounce off.'  
'Bad idea,' the krogan said. 'I don't like bouncing. It makes me feel all squishy.'  
'I agree; the galaxy isn't ready for squishable krogan.'  
'Damn right it's not!'  
In spite of it all, Dex realised, he was enjoying this. Anyone sensible would have been terrified by this experience, but he wasn't. This situation had the same sort of feeling as being in combat, a sense of a genuine challenge to your skill, determination and ingenuity. But here the enemies were the laws of gravity, momentum and kinetic energy - impersonal and faceless foes. There was none of the moral ambiguity of war. Here, survival meant exactly that - it didn't imply that someone else had been required to die or suffer so that you could escape.  
'Okay. Change of plan. Krondesh, no offence but you're the biggest and heaviest of us. Basically, you're the centre of mass. Can you throw a very small shockwave?'  
'No,' the krogan said. 'It's all or nothing.'  
'Damn.' Dex's earlier enthusiasm for this contest vanished. It appeared they might be stuffed after all.  
'But,' Krondesh said, 'I could throw something else really hard. Like that water bottle of yours, perhaps?'  
It could work. If Krondesh kept his arm close in, it might push them without spinning them too much. There would be a reaction to the action of throwing the bottle. But it would mean giving up Dex's spare water.  
Well, no matter. He could find more inside Omega.  
'Okay,' he said.  
He felt the krogan reaching down. There was a jerk as Krondesh tugged the water bottle free from Dex's belt.  
'Keep your arm as close in as you can,' Dex said. 'Try to throw along the axis as much as possible, not at an angle to it.'  
'Got it.'   
And with that, the krogan hurled the bottle away.  
Their angle of flight changed. Dex watched as the bottle sailed off into the darkness. It would presumably settle into orbit around Sahrabarik, roughly following an orbit similar to Omega's. He wondered if anyone would find it, thousands or millions of years in the future.  
'We've got a better angle,' the krogan reported, 'but we're still coming in a bit fast.'  
He was right. The hab cylinder filled half of Dex's field of vision now. Its surface was a jumbled mass of cables, ducts, telecomms dishes, aerials and cooling fins. If they weren't careful, they stood a good chance of getting skewered on one of those spiky metal outgrowths.  
Dex felt a crawling, electrical sensation. He shivered. 'What was that?'  
'You're inside my barrier,' the krogan said. 'I can just about put it over both of us. So I did.'  
That was good idea. The barrier would spread the force of landing over a wider area. They'd be less likely to break any bones on impact. In fact, between the barrier and their armour, they might not even have any bruises.  
'When we hit,' Krondesh said, 'I'll try to grab one of those aerials. Makes sense for me to do it - I'm strongest and my reaction time's faster.'  
'No argument here,' Dex said.  
They were almost at the habitat. The metal was coming up fast.  
Suddenly there appeared a long aerial, right next to them. They were shooting down past the metal stem. Krondesh reached out.  
His gauntlet closed on the aerial.  
In the vacuum, there was no screech of metal on metal. Nonetheless Dex felt the shudder, propagated through Krondesh's arm and torso and into him. There was also a violent jerk as their velocity slowed.  
The aerial was bending.  
Dex stared in horror as they slid down it. Was it about to snap?  
The bend was getting worse.  
Dex thought quickly. Strictly, they weren't falling onto Omega. It just looked that way, because of how organic brains handle perceptions of relative motion. What was actually happening was that the space station's faster orbit was overtaking their slower one. In a sense, it was falling toward them.  
Speeding them up a little would remove the velocity difference. Then they would no longer be moving relative to Omega itself.  
Dex pointed the Phaeston behind them and fired a burst.  
This time, with Krondesh holding the aerial, they weren't spun. Instead, by a spirits-blessed miracle, the sky stopped moving. The habitat was no longer rushing toward them. The stars were no longer wheeling.  
They hung from a bent aerial, one point two five six metres above the shell of Omega.  
'Okay,' Krondesh said, 'one little push and we're back on the ground.'  
Dex nodded. 'If it's gentle one then the pressure-grips in our bootsoles will hold. Do it.'  
The krogan gave the aerial a light shove.  
A moment later, with a gentle bump, they were both stood on the outer surface of the cylinder.  
'Thank the spirits for that,' Dex said.  
'Can you see the sky car?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex looked up, but it was lost against the blackness. 'No,' he said.  
‘Did we really just do that?’ the krogan asked. ‘Jump through the sky, I mean?’  
‘Apparently guns and biotics are a powerful combination,’ Dex agreed. He felt a warm bloom of satisfaction spread through him. They really had just done the impossible! What a crazy rush!  
‘You seemed like you’d done a lot of jumping around through the sky,’ the krogan remarked. ‘You didn’t seem at all bothered by the spinning. Or being away from the ground.’  
Dex was feeling distracted and giddy with relief at having survived the escape from the skycar. So it was perhaps understandable that he made a small slip. ‘My old combat suit had rocket packs,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘You only got a few second’s thrust, of course, but that was enough to do some fun stuff. I rocket-punched a geth once, after I sabotaged it not to move. Cruel, maybe, but it was worth it!’  
‘I thought so,’ the krogan said, his voice abruptly incisive. ‘You’re ex-Armiger Legion. Combat Engineering Corps, if my guess is correct. And if the false face is any indication, you didn’t muster out in a legal manner, did you?’  
Shit.  
The feeling of survival-elation crashed into ashes. A sick sensation spread in the pit of Dex’s stomach. Of all the people to be exposed by, it was a spirits-damned krogan!  
Krondesh was right on every point. Shit.  
‘And from your silence, I’m guessing you can’t bring yourself to deny it, either,’ Krondesh said. ‘Funny thing is, you don’t strike me as the usual sort of deserter. You’re obviously not a coward. You’re not incompetent. Sounds like you might have an interesting story.’  
Dex shook his head and sighed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have a fucking depressing story. Nothing you’d enjoy hearing.’  
‘If the turian military saw you again, what would happen?’  
The krogan knew. The krogan clearly wasn’t going to accept being fobbed off. Suddenly Dex regretted his earlier generosity toward Krondesh. What was the alien going to do? Was this it, the final check-out point in Dex’s disaster of a life? Another well-intentioned disaster, another case of idealistic actions exploding in his face?  
Dex shrugged. ‘I suppose I’d be given some sort of trial. Then I’d be shot. End of story. Why, are you planning on selling me to the Hierarchy?’  
‘No,’ Krondesh said.  
‘What?’  
‘Why would I sell you to the Hierarchy? Seriously, do you think they’d even stoop to pay a krogan? With real money?’ Krondesh snorted. ‘You probably don’t know this, but many krogan mercs won’t take turian jobs. No point. Birds often skimp on the payment. They don’t think us illiterate brutes deserve money. And anyway, there’s something else.’  
‘What’s that?’  
‘If you’ve pissed off the Hierarchy, you can’t be all bad.’  
Dex boggled. That almost sounded like a compliment. A compliment - from Krondesh? What in the name of the spirits was going on?  
After a moment, Dex said, ‘For what it’s worth, what I did saved lives rather then took them. That’s why I did it. I had to choose between protecting and following orders. I chose to protect.’  
‘Okay,’ the krogan said. ‘Whatever.’  
‘What, only that? “Okay”? I did the worst thing any turian can do - I told my commander where to fuck off to.’  
Suddenly Dex was ranting. Something combusted deep inside him. An anger that he barely even admitted to himself was down there was burning. He felt the emotional fire running through him.   
‘Disobedience. Mutiny. Dishonour. I did it all. It’s all my shame but that fucking bastard gave me no choice! Damn it, my unit had to die so that his family’s fucking store could be saved! The Citadel was fucking burning, there were fucking geth everywhere, and all he cared about was that stupid electronics shop! When they have thousands of others, everywhere across the fucking galaxy! But no, we can’t see so much as a credit off the fucking bottom line, can we? Even when the world is burning. Even when the cost was the blood of every man in my platoon! But not him, of course. Instead of being with his men he had his feet up in that fucking bunker, all safe and secure. And he had the gall to tell me all the geth we shot would get him a promotion! So of course I mutinied. I wasn’t going to let him murder my brothers. Yes, I disobeyed orders. Yes, I moved us back to a defensible position. Yes, I called for reinforcements. Yes, I told them to go through the cover of the storehouse. And you know what? I’m fucking proud of it. If I hadn’t done that, every man in the platoon would have been pulse rifled into ash. As it is we only took two casualties, and they were injuries, not deaths.’  
‘Geth?’ Krondesh sounded surprised. ‘The Citadel? Wait - you were there, during Saren’s attack?’  
‘Yes, I was there! We were stationed in the Wards. I remember when they suddenly started closing, for no reason. I even saw that fucking ship of his as it came in, too. Enormous. Creepy as hell. And then there were fucking geth crawling over everything. And yes, before you ask, I shot some of his fucking krogan too!’  
Dex thought telling Krondesh that was a mistake. He wondered if the krogan was about to murder him.  
Instead, Krondesh started laughing.  
‘By the seas,’ the krogan said, ‘I think I’m starting to not-hate you!’  
‘What?’  
‘You know what we do?’ the krogan asked. ‘If a Battlemaster gives stupid orders, we tell him to fuck off. And if he doesn’t see sense, we kick his arse. Or he kicks ours, in which case we concede point. Your commander was unworthy of his honours. He sounds like scum. I hope you ate his corpse. Frankly, from what it sounds like, you behaved more like a krogan than a turian.’  
For a moment Dex felt pure rage. How dare this krogan insult him like that after all he’d done? The temerity! To compare him to a-  
Then he realised something, and it pulled him up cold: the krogan was paying him a compliment.  
The krogan’s helmeted head was pointed straight at Dex. ‘Tell me one thing,’ the krogan said. ‘If you did it all again, would you do anything different?’  
Dex felt a totally unexpected surge of honesty. Confiding in a krogan? What was this? ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There is one thing.’  
‘And that would be?’  
‘I’d have fucking shot fucking Second Lieutenant Octavius Kresius Quirinian. I’d have fucking shot him fucking dead. And damn the fucking consequences.’  
‘Good,’ the krogan said.  
‘And ... you don’t care that I’ve killed other krogan?’ Definitely four of them, in fact. There were two more that Dex wasn’t entirely sure about.  
‘No,’ Krondesh said. ‘You killed tankbred slaves. Not true krogan. Saren claimed to give us hope, but what he offered us was lies. The only future he had for us was a different set of chains. We know that now.’  
For a moment, Dex sensed some of Krondesh’s disappointment. What must that have been like, when Saren’s envoys started moving among the clans of Tuchanka all those years ago, promising freedom from the genophage? Only to later discover that it had all been a fake, engineered with cloning tanks and trickery? The disillusionment must have burned. The fakery was now widely-known across the galaxy - although much of it was still security-restricted, the Council had released some of the omnitool videos of the assault on Saren’s base. They’d done so to challenge a lot of the rumours and conspiracy theories that had been floating on the extranet about the whole affair. It had been all over the news for about a week in September 2183.  
Dex hesitated, looking around him. They were surrounded by the jumbled equipment that littered the outside of the hab-cylinder. Knife-sharp black shadows spilled across surfaces and weak pink sunlight shone on metallic surfaces. Icy stars glittered down on them from the visible bits of sky. Apart from the breathing in his helmet and their voices on the radio, it was silent.  
‘So,’ he asked, ‘are we ... okay?’  
Krondesh nodded. ‘I’d say so. Now, what do we do next?’  
‘How are you doing for air?’  
‘Not so good,’ the krogan admitted. ‘With all the biotic stuff I’ve been using it up faster than expected. I’ve got about twenty minutes now.’  
Dex looked down the cylinder. They were actually fairly close to the far end. The Lower Warrens were inside, beneath their feet.  
‘Right. Well, we’d better find that naughty airlock Kat was telling us about, hadn’t we?’


	7. Under Pressure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q: what do you call a krogan and a turian stranded outside an alien-constructed megastructure?
> 
> A: Dex and Krondesh.
> 
> The misfortunate pair experience a test of their ingenuity when they seek to re-enter the station. The day is saved (narrowly) by a spent thermal clip and some unexpected ice. Then notes are compared, and a new take on their situation is derived…

'So,' Krondesh said, 'where exactly is this airlock?'  
They were stood in a relatively-clear spot, with smooth, bare metal underneath their feet. On one side, a collection of cooling-vanes rose into the sky, their branching fronds looking like a set of metallic ferns. On the other side a broken comms dish was pointed at nothing in particular. Something had chewed a big hole in one side of the parabola and the central receiver was bent out of alignment. In front of them was a complex mass of protruding ducts and valves, none of which served any obvious purpose. Nowhere in sight was there anything that looked like an airlock.  
Dex looked at the display from his omnitool. He felt worried. 'According to the map,' he said, 'this is the right place.'  
Krondesh walked over. 'Let me look.'  
Dex found himself stood quite literally in the shadow of the massive, armoured krogan. Krondesh had parked himself between Dex and the sun. The burly alien was outlined in black against the sky. With Sahrabarik's pink light cut off, the omnitool's display was easier to read, however.  
Krondesh leaned forward. For a moment Dex thought the krogan was about to headbutt him, but Krondesh was actually trying to get a closer look at the display.  
'Hmm,' the krogan said. 'I thought you'd got us lost, bird, but you haven't.' He looked to the side. 'That's definitely the dish she marked. And those are the cooling vanes. And that is - that is whatever it is.' He waved a hand at the confused mass of pipes. 'Okay, bird, you're actually right. There should be an airlock here.'  
Dex looked down. 'There isn't, though.'  
'Your powers of observation dazzle me.'  
Dex decided to ignore the sarcasm. He dropped to one knee and rapped his knuckles on the metal. 'And furthermore, I can't see any sign that there ever was an airlock here.'  
There was no airlock. From the unblemished hull plating, there never had been an airlock. And from the generally dilapidated surrounds, it looked clear that there never would be an airlock here.  
'Problematic,' Krondesh observed.  
'Yes. We're sort of stuck outside,' Dex said.  
Krondesh turned around, apparently surveying the landscape. 'I'd say at least the view's good, but actually, it isn't.'  
They were somewhere above the Lower Warrens. Consequently, this area of the hab-cylinder's surface was in particularly-poor repair. The pipes they could see were dented and scratched and there were patches of flaking paint everywhere. The area had a weirdly moth-eaten feel to it.  
'Dare I ask,' Dex began.  
'No,' Krondesh interjected.  
Dex sighed. 'Air supply?'  
The krogan shrugged. 'Down to fifteen minutes now.'  
Dex thought quickly. 'Uh, what about your hump?'  
'Oh you've got your eye on my hump, have you? Well sorry to disappoint, but that stores food and water, not oxygen.'  
'Crap.' Dex gulped. 'You sound remarkably unworried.'  
The krogan shrugged again. 'Something occurred to me earlier. If you hadn't bought me this suit, I'd already be dead. Should already be dead, actually. And anyway I'm krogan. We don't scare easily.'  
Was that another recurrence of Krondesh's half-sublimated death wish, or was he just being flippant? Dex couldn't quite tell.  
'Also,' Krondesh added, 'there's one advantage to imminent asphyxiation.'  
Dex boggled. 'And that would be?'  
Krondesh waved an arm at the sky. 'Means I don't have to care about the fact that my pants are still in the car.'  
'Oh crap.' Dex was abruptly reminded of something else.  
'What?'  
'My Mantis. It was in its case - in the back compartment!' In the back compartment of the skycar that had exploded.  
'Well I wouldn't worry,' the krogan said. 'It's not like it's any use to us now.'  
Dex had been toying with a daft idea about trying to shoot a hole through the hull. 'Well' he said, 'this is awkward. I might see if I can call Kat again. Maybe she knows something.'  
He tapped his omnitool to place the call. Nothing happened.  
'We're outside the station,' Krondesh pointed out. 'No mobile reception.'  
Dex muttered a rude word. The krogan was right. All the comms transceivers were on the wrong side of twenty centimetres of hull-plating. The maintenance crews who went outside the station had their own dedicated arrays, but they were on a different frequency and a different encoding, and Dex had no idea what those details were. Plus also, there probably weren't any working maintenance arrays outside of the Lower Warrens. Dex could see plenty of antenna-shaped objects near their location, but none of them showed a power signature or any other sign of functionality.  
The krogan sat down. Dex felt a slight jolt run through the hull as the alien dropped his bulk down onto it. 'May as well get comfortable,' the krogan said. 'A pity the scenery's shite. Would've preferred to die somewhere prettier. Could do with some repairs here.'  
Repair.  
An idea exploded into Dex's brain. 'Yes! That's it! Krondesh, you're right!'  
'What, that we're going to die?'  
'No, about repairs!' Dex almost bounced for joy. 'This is the Lower Warrens. The whole area is badly maintained. There must be weak points in the hull - meteor scars, ship debris, firefight damage, anything! If we look for an air leak, we might be able to force our way in.'  
The krogan titled his head on one side, as if thinking about it. Then he stood up again. 'Okay. What do we look for?'  
Dex dialled up his omnitool. 'First thing is an infrared signature,' he said. 'Sahrabarik is a red dwarf, and Omega'S a long way out from it. The hab-cylinders are insulated, to keep heat in as much as possible.'  
'Yeah, I think I heard somewhere that most of Omega's electricity goes on the heating systems,' Krondesh mused.  
Dex nodded. 'At this distance from Sahrabarik, the thermal equilibrium temperature is something like two hundred degrees below freezing. But yeah, the station has those four massive four-hundred-gigawatt class reactors. Between them they run the air processing systems, the waterworks and the heating.'  
'Turn them off and we'd all die,' Krondesh noted.  
'You're being really morbid today.'  
'Blame it on the lack of oxygen, bird.'  
'So what we need to do,' Dex said, feeling excited at having a technical question to work with, 'is do a scan for areas that are hotter than the hull should be. If they're hotter, the heat has to be coming from somewhere. It can't be coming from the star...'  
'... so it has to be coming from inside,' Krondesh said, enlightenment dawning.  
'Got it. But there's a large area. Can we search it out in time?'  
Dex tapped some keys on his omnitool. He pulled a drone from one of his pouches. 'That's easy,' he said. 'We just use one of my sentry-drones. They're already keyed to pick up heatsources. It's partly how the turret targets stuff.'  
He tossed the drone away from them. Its little eezo motor sprang to life. Dex set it on a spiralling path, moving out from their current position. It vanished silently into the blackness. The krogan and the turian looked closely at the display on Dex's omnitool, waiting.  
After two minutes' flight, the little drone found a thermal source.  
'Look at that!' Dex said. 'A vapour plume containing oxygen and nitrogen, and a temperature not much below freezing! That's a hull leak for sure.'  
'No point waiting,' the krogan said. 'Let's get moving.'  
The drone had been able to fly without obstruction. This was not the case for the two organics. They had to clamber over bulky pipes, avoid jumbled cables, dodge aerials and route around antennae and cooling systems. It took them another twelve minutes to get to the site, even though it was only about three hundred metres' distance.  
'Okay,' the krogan said. 'I'm down to a few minutes' air. This had better work.' He still sounded remarkably unworried. In spite of himself, Dex felt a degree of admiration. Whatever else you might say about the krogan, he was clearly brave.  
The plume was coming from a tear in the hull. The rent appeared to have been torn out from underneath, to judge from the curled-up edges of the metal and composite, and the scorching on the underside. Dex guessed someone's home-made bomb had worked a little bit too well. Or perhaps some poorly-maintained pumping system had simply had enough one day, and had detonated under its unbalanced internal pressures. The gash was wide - there was room enough for both of them to get through.  
Someone had attempted some home-brewed repair work on the breach. Heavy plastic sheets had been taped down over it, multiple layers of tape affixing the edges to the hull. The plastic bowed out in a taught hemisphere, under its internal pressure. The plume that the drone had detected came from a single little nick in the middle.  
'We need to cut through this,' Dex said.  
Krondesh was holding his knife. Dex blinked; he'd completely forgotten about the krogan's blade. The knife gleamed whitely in the weak daylight. The sun was reflected in red along its edge. It looked savagely-sharp.  
'A Tuchankan blade,' Krondesh said, answering Dex's unspoken question. 'You're looking at polished and sharpened maw-tooth. It can cut anything.'  
That was part of a thresher maw's tooth? Dex boggled.  
The krogan attacked the plastic as if it were a mortal enemy.  
Dex had expected the sheeting to tear violently as the air inside forced its way out. Instead, it shuddered and then sagged slowly in.  
'Hey,' Krondesh said, 'there's fuck all pressure behind this.'  
'That's weird,' Dex said. He'd been expecting that they'd have to force their way in past a howling gale of escaping air.  
A few moments more of ripping and tearing and the krogan had made a decent-sized hole. He climbed through. As they were back inside the cylinder's mass field, the krogan just dropped down into the hole. On not hearing any howls of outrage or pain over the radio, Dex decided it must be safe to follow him. He pulled himself through the hole.  
Past the ragged hull-scar, they found themselves in a small compartment. It had bent and warped walls, presumably damage from the explosion that had opened the gash. The walls were dented and blackened. Some heaps of charred and jumbled debris may once have been furtniture, but it was hard to tell. The gash was two and a half metres above their heads.  
Dex looked at his omnitool. 'Air pressure is four percent of standard,' he reported. 'Our blood won't boil, but we can't breathe yet.'  
'And that's why.' The krogan pointed.  
The dim light made clear why the pressure had been low. The room's entrance was a standard Omegan door, which was closed. As the room was open to space, it was cold in here. With the temperature below freezing, water vapour in the air had been condensed into ice around the doorframe. The ice had gradually expanded over the gaps, largely plugging them.  
'Air pressure's still falling,' Dex said. It was down to three percent now. 'The seepage around the door must've just balanced out that tiny hole that was in the plastic. And now we've opened it right up.'  
'When we pop that door,' Krondesh said, 'we might get blown back out.'  
Once more, the krogan was right. What could they do?  
'We need to reseal the plastic,' Dex said.  
'Great idea, but do you have any glue?'  
Dex didn't. For a moment he felt despair. What were they going to do? Would they just have to risk the door, and hope they could pull themselves past the gale somehow?  
Then he noticed the glowing telltale on the side of his Phaeston, which he was still carrying in one hand.  
'No, no glue,' he said, 'but we do have an almost-overheated thermal clip.'  
'What use is that?'  
'It can melt stuff,' Dex said. 'Krondesh, I can't reach up to the plastic by myself. I'll need you to pick me up.'  
'Ninety second's air,' the krogan told him. 'I'm getting sick of all the alarms inside this helmet. All this shrieking's more tedious than a volus banker's birthday party.'  
Krondesh grabbed him and lifted him up.  
Dex tugged the thermal clip from the side of the Phaeston. The gun folded up into its carry configuration. He put it back into its slot on his backplate. Then, awkwardly held up by the krogan's sturdy arms, he reached for the torn plastic.  
The pressure in the room had dropped almost to nothing now. The sheets sagged limply. This was good - it allowed Dex to tug them back into place. He had to stretch them a bit to make sure the gap was covered. Putting them under tension wasn't good, but there was no help for it.  
'Sixty seconds,' Krondes told him. 'Getting a bit stale in here.'  
'Try bathing,' Dex shot back.  
'Scoring points off an asphyxiating man! That's a low blow even for you, bird!'  
Dex took the sarcasm as a good sign. If Krondesh ever wasn't sarcastic, that would be the point at which to get worried.  
The thermal clip was hot. Dex tugged the sides of the tear together so that they overlapped a little, then he used the clip to anneal them together. He worked his way down the gash, sealing it shut again.  
'Thirty seconds,' Krondesh said.  
'Okay, put me down.'  
The krogan lowered him to the floor. Dex looked up and quickly checked his handiwork. He couldn't see any spots he'd missed. Oh well, he'd just have to hope that this was enough. He sprinted over to the door.  
The thermal clip had cooled noticeably - the glow on its vents had faded to a deep red - but there should still be enough heat in there to weaken the ice. Dex picked the thinnest-looking section and applied the clip.  
A plume of steam erupted out.  
'Ten seconds,' Krondesh said.  
The steam was fast expanding into the chamber. Dex's omnitool reported a measurable air pressure again. Point six percent of an atmosphere. The plastic bulged outwards, under tension once more.  
There was a hiss.  
Dex realised he could actually hear again. The hiss was getting louder as the pressure rose. That was a good sign! It also meant the room was repressurising gently, making it less likely that the plastic would rip under the sudden force of the air.  
With an audible crack, the ice-plating shattered, shocked by the heating and the melting. Fragments sprayed out. Air whooshed in around the edges of the door. Dex actually felt the draft, pushing a little against him.  
'Five seconds,' Krondesh said.  
Dex glanced at his omnitool. The pressure had gone up sharply. Thirty percent of a standard atmosphere. They couldn't wait any longer. But the power was off in this room, so none of the automatics on the door were working. Dex pulled up the cover over one of the emergency handles. Gripping the handle, he yanked it.  
With a shuddering groan, the door jerked open by about forty centimetres.  
Light and air gushed into the room.  
The blast of wind bowled Dex off his feet. He tumbled straight into Krondesh. His armoured form smacked into the krogan with an audible crack. He felt Krondesh grab him under one arm, hauling him to his feet. Dex reached out and tugged at the catches on the krogan's helmet. It came off with a hiss and a pop.  
Krondesh looked a bit dazed and was breathing hard, but he appeared unharmed. The roar of inflooding air was fading away. The pressure inside the room was almost equalised now.  
'Wow,' the krogan said. 'You don't get closer than that. I was actually holding my breath for a few seconds there.'  
'Glad you're okay,' Dex said.  
From above them, something creaked.  
Dex looked up. The plastic was rippling and stretching. He could see strain-marks appearing. He pointed. 'We'd better get out of here.'  
The krogan took one look at the plastic. His pupils expanded. He grabbed Dex, scooped him up, and dived out of the room.  
They landed with an awkward roll in a dirty corridor outside the room. Krondesh dumped Dex on the floor. 'Hold this!' he said, dropping his helmet on Dex.  
Then he turned and grabbed one of the outer handles on the door.  
With a grunt, he pushed it.  
It groaned as it moved on its dry bearings. With another grunt, Krondesh heaved it further. Finally, he managed to push it shut. He leaned there, breathing hard.  
From the other side of the door, they heard a muffled bang. It was followed by a loud rushing noise, whose volume quickly fell. The rushing noise finally gave way to a very slight hiss, coming from the edges of the big sliding door.  
'Looks like your plastic didn't hold long,' Krondesh said.  
'Longer than I expected,' Dex admitted. He felt a need to be breathing fresh air. He reached up and tugged his own helmet loose.  
'Think we need to do anything about that?' Krondesh pointed at the unsealed edge of the doorframe.  
Dex shook his head. 'Nothing we can do. No more plastic. Or hot clips. I guess it'll just get a new layer of ice - see, there's water dribbling on it already.' There was. The drop in pressure on the other side had also pulled the temperature down. Droplets of water were condensing from the air and running down the inner surface of the door. The gaps would be plugged with ice again soon.  
'Well,' the krogan said, 'it looks like we're going to live. How surprising.'  
Weakly, Dex nodded. 'Let's just sit for a minute. I need my breath back.'  
'You need your breath back? That's rich from the man with the two-hour rebreather!' The krogan's sarcasm had no actual force behind it. He settled down next to Dex, on the scuffed and dirty decking beneath them.  
For a few minutes, they just sat.  
Finally Dex reached for his omnitool. 'I'd better call Kat,' he said.  
'No,' Krondesh said. 'Don't do that.' The weak light of the nearest luminescence-panel gleamed on his violet head plates. He reached out with a gauntleted hand and gripped Dex's wrist, forestalling him.  
'Why not?' Dex asked.  
'Don't you think it's a bit odd that she had precise directions for a place that doesn't exist?' There was something dangerous in the krogan's eyes. They were narrow and predatory.  
'I - what do you mean?'  
'In fact, everything about this stinks,' Krondesh said. 'A bomb goes off in the tunnel we were meant to use. At the time we would've used it. Then just after you call her, the car's engine block explodes. And now it turns out she gave us directions that would've left us stranded on the hull. In a place with no comms links. Where we very probably would have died, but for your drone.'  
'But what about Karrean?' Dex asked. 'I thought it must have been his organisation that blew the skycar.'  
'If we hadn't been beached out on the hull,' Krondesh said, 'I'd blame Karrean, yes. But there are too many deadly coincidences here. I don't think we were ever meant to get to Karrean.'  
'But...' Dex frowned. 'You're saying she's arranged all of this? To kill us?'  
The krogan nodded. 'When you spoke to her on the omnitool - she did seem very surprised, didn't she? I'm not great at reading asari faces - they're like humans. Too flat and bland, except for those weird nose things. There's something creepy about the way those nostrils flare.' The krogan shuddered. Then he continued, 'But she really didn't act like she was pleased to see us. Or that she expected to see us.'  
Dex frowned. 'At the time I just put it down to the tunnel explosion. I mean, it would seem reasonable if she'd thought we were dead.'  
He was feeling a growing sense of doubt, though.  
'Why?' he said. 'Why would Kat want us dead? We're just contractors. No-one important. Also, why not just shoot us at the office?'  
'That's easy enough,' Krondesh said. 'Because if she tried that, we'd kick her scrawny asari arse. No way could she go up against both of us in a straight fight.'  
'She had guards.'  
Krondesh snorted. 'What, you mean those batarian grathtaks? They wouldn't even slow either of us down.'  
Dex remembered the batarian guards he'd seen the other day, outside the armoury.  
Krondesh had a point. Dex probably could have taken them on his own, equipped as he was now. And he'd seen firsthand what Krondesh's shockwave could accomplish - and that was apparently his weakest power!  
Apparently having made his point, the krogan leaned back against the wall behind him. The plates of his armour rattled a little as he moved. 'You know what we need?'  
'What?'  
'Beer.'  
'Really? I'd have pegged you more as a ryncol man.'  
'Well yes, obviously, but I have to make allowances for current company.' The krogan waved a hand expansively. 'It's not really your fault you were born with a shitty, feeble and useless alien liver, after all.'  
'If I get reincarnated, I'll try to bear that in mind.' Dex slumped backwards. He heard his backplate clunk against the wall. 'What a crap day this has been.'  
Krondesh turned serious again. 'The test,' he said, 'is what happens if we try to skrag Karrean. My guess is he knows we're coming, and we get ambushed.'  
Dex sighed. 'What's the point? We're not going to get paid. She won't give us the stuff.'  
'Who said anything about giving?' Krondesh shook his head. 'Stop being naive, bird. When we're done skragging Karrean, we loot his carcass. And his entourage. And we flog all of their crap on the markets. That gives us some money. We buy some better guns. The we go and skrag Kat and take the stuff she oews us.'  
Dex rolled his eyes. He felt his mandibles flex. 'Remind me never to piss you off.'  
The krogan nodded. 'Damn right. You're learning.'  
'But what I don't get,' Dex said, 'is, why? Why is she after us? I mean, don't take this the wrong way, but we're nobodies. I'm a turian deserter who's hiding out here because if I went home, they'd shoot me. You're a krogan whom they threw out for no really obvious reason. Why us?'  
Krondesh scowled. 'Don't remind me about Tuchanka,' he said.  
'But blowing up the tunnel,' Dex said. 'That's just a dumb move. It puts Kat squarely in the sights of T'Loak. That's not a good place to be. Plus also it pisses off all the people who live in Gozu and commute to Kima. If she did that, she's basically signed her own death warrant.'  
'Assuming she gets caught,' the krogan said. 'If she's smart she'll have planted a false trail, pointing to someone else.'  
A thought occurred to Dex. 'Karrean,' he said.  
The krogan nodded, evidently unsurprised. 'Yes.'  
'So is that the motive? She's after Karrean, we're just collateral damage?'  
'Could be. She rigged the car to blow as a bit of insurance, just in case the tunnel didn't get us. When Aria's envoys pay Kat a visit, she explains that she was out to stiff a competitor. Perfectly normal Omegan business practise. But the competitor found out, and they went a little too far and damaged the station itself.'  
Comprehension dawned. Dex nodded. 'So T'Loak loses it. She goes and smashes Karrean once and for all. Kat's co-operated fully with T'Loak's inquiry, so she gets exonerated. In fact she even looks a bit the victim. So she can then step in and pick up the pieces of Karrean's business empire.'  
'Minus the Collector connection, one assumes,' Krondesh said.  
'It's convoluted,' Dex said, 'but Kat is pretty devious. She's also ambitious and ruthless. So it's something she might do.'  
'Of course,' Krondesh said, 'if we turn up alive, she won't be happy. In fact she'll most likely try to kill us.'  
Dex considered the situation. 'You know,' he said. 'You're right. We need him for information.'  
'If we get ambushed,' Krondesh said, 'then he must be in it with Kat. If we don't get ambushed, then he doesn't know about it. And this plot is all Kat's doing.'  
'Also,' Dex said, 'with all the money I spent on you, I need the loot. Since I won't be getting the Widow, I need to buy a new sniper rifle.' Seeing the krogan's expression he added quickly, 'Don't worry, Krondesh, you were money well-spent.'  
The krogan mellowed a little.  
'Also,' Dex added, ' we need the confirmation. We've got dirt on Kat, so she's going to be after us. If we can interrogate Karrean or his lackeys, we might just have the evidence we need.'  
Krondesh could clearly see where this was going. 'Then we take it to T'Loak. And make Kat her problem.'  
Dex nodded, mandibles flexing. 'Karrean can give us the proof. With that, T'Loak goes after Kat, and our mad-and-evil employer problem gets solved.'  
'How are we doing for time?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex consulted his omnitool. 'Not so good,' he said. 'If we're going to make this, we'd better move.'  
'Where are we?' the krogan asked.  
Dex did a quick scan. There was a navigational beacon, glimmering at a bottom-end signal-strength. He accessed it. 'Right. This is going to get tricky,' he said. 'We're three levels down from where we should be, and nearly a kilometre spinwards. There's only one route that can even possibly get us to the intersection on time. And if we take that, we come out at the opposite end then the one we'd planned.'  
Krondesh jumped to his feet. 'Well come on then!' He banged his fists together, then patted the butt of his shotgun. 'There's a batarian who needs killing! Let's move!'  
Dex looked at him. 'You're very enthusiastic about violence,' he said, hauling himself to his feet.  
'Skragging stuff is fun.' The krogan shrugged. Apparently that was the only explanation that he needed.  
Dex slid his helmet back on. He was breathing filtered air, through the vents, rather than using the rebreather.  
Krondesh had replaced his helmet as well. 'I need to get these gas-scrubbers changed,' he said. 'They're basically dead. Lucky we're breathing station air now.' There was a snick. The krogan had selected his shotgun. It unfolded itself in his hands.  
Dex checked over his Phaeston. He dug out one of his fresh thermal clips and locked into place. The gun's VI beeped, acknowledging its readiness.  
'We need to go that way.' He pointed further down the corridor.  
With some relief, they left the fast-frosting door behind.


	8. Ambush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A krogan and a turian have an appointment with a batarian.
> 
> Nothing goes to plan, for anyone. Decisions have to be made, quickly. Krondesh displays an admirable penchant for explosions. Dex shows another aspect of his character.

'We're going to have to change our plans,' Dex said as they walked along another corridor. Typical of the Lower Warrens, half the luminescence-panels were dead and most of the others were flickering. Random bits of detritus lay scattered around on the floor. The air vents along the ceiling hissed and groaned.  
'How so?' Krondesh asked.  
'I was going to snipe Karrean,' Dex said. 'Obviously that's not an option now. Also we won't be able to catch them at the choke-point.'  
'So what do we do?’  
'I think the best bet is to catch them as they come out from the choke point,' Dex said. 'I drop one of my grenades on them. You run in and do whatever it is you do-'  
'Hit stuff.' The krogan mimed punching something with his free hand. The other one was engaged holding his shotgun.  
'-hit stuff, okay. And when they try to escape, I get them with the Phaeston.' Dex called up a map on his omnitool. 'It looks like there's a sidestreet just over here, near the rubble pile.' He pointed to the street on the map. 'I hide around the corner and shoot them from there. If you need to pull back, join me over here. I can cover you on the way over.'  
'Just you?' Krondesh sounded dubious. 'There will be more of them then there are of us.'  
Dex allowed himself a moment of smugness. 'Me plus my drone,' he said.  
'What does this drone of yours actually do that's so good?'  
'Flamethrower.'  
'Oh.' The krogan considered that. 'Well-played, bird. Well-played.'  
'Fire is usually a good option. Plus also, I can level the playing field a bit.' Dex waved his omnitool up. 'If there are open network connections, then I can sabotage their weapons.'  
'Are there usually open network connections?'  
'Almost always.'  
'You don't get that with fists.'  
'I suppose not.' Dex blinked. Actually, that was a good point. 'Krondesh, one more thing.'  
'What?'  
'Are you really sure you want to do this? I mean, you'll be exposed to a lot of risk. More then I will be.'  
The krogan's helmet turned to regard him. Krondesh didn't speak for a time. Then he said, 'Funny thing is, bird, you've already had several good opportunities to get me killed.'  
Dex was puzzled. 'Not really. I couldn't have got out of the skycar myself, you know.'  
'The room with the plastic,' Krondesh said. 'All you'd need to have done was make a mess of doing that. A few minutes without air and you wouldn't have a krogan problem anymore.'  
Dex was appalled. 'Krondesh, I don't have krogan problem! I didn't have a krogan problem then and I don't have a krogan problem now!'  
Was this really how Krondesh saw the world? Just an unending succession of people trying to get him killed?  
Krondesh's head nodded. 'I figure if you were trying to get me killed, you'd have done it by now.' He paused. 'Actually, you've treated me better then even most other krogan. I don't think you're going to abandon me to Karrean.' Overhead, an air vent coughed and rattled. 'So I'm probably going to keep following you around for a bit longer.'  
Dex's omnitool peeped.  
'Oh, thirty metre warning,' he said. 'We're very close to the intersection.' They were only metres from the entrance to the big gang-run transit tube. 'One more turning and we'll be on the street.' Dex pointed.  
The turning was ahead of them. Brighter light spilled around the corner. With it came the noises of a street, muffled conversation, feet on the pavement, murmurs of  
machinery. Time to put the omnitool on silent mode, then. Dex quickly adjusted the settings. It vibrated in recognition of the changes.  
Krondesh had his shotgun in both hands.  
'Not yet,' Dex told him. 'If we just walk out there, we'll get seen. We need to see if we can get in place round the back somehow.'  
'All this sneaking,' Krondesh said. 'Are you sure you're not secretly a salarian?'  
'Let me look at the map.' Dex peered at his omnitool display again, also ignoring the krogan’s interjection. 'Wait, it looks like there's a back corridor, behind the main street front.' He pointed. 'And it seems we can get to it from this very corridor.'  
'Where?' Krondesh asked.  
'There.' Dex pointed. There was a battered and rusty maintenance hatch on the wall. It looked old. It didn't appear to be access-restricted - there was no sign of a haptic interface for the lock. 'That should lead through. I don't suppose you could give the handle a yank?'  
The krogan lumbered over. With one massive hand he grabbed the protruding handle.   
He tugged. 'Wow,' he said. 'It's pretty stiff. Let me try again.' Krondesh pulled it harder, leaning back on his feet.  
With a rattling groan, the hatch reluctantly opened.  
'Thanks. Through we go!'  
Moments later, a turian and a krogan found themselves in a narrow back-corridor that ran parallel to the main street. It was badly-lit and damp. Most of the illumination came from the little side-corridors that cut out to the main street. It was anyone's guess where all the water was coming from, although some of it was doubtless condensation from the cool air inside the Lower Warrens. The floor was uneven, making the walking tricky.   
The deeper depressions were all filled with cold water.  
As they walked, Dex tried not to splash through too many puddles. At one point he stepped in one so deep that his foot vanished up to the ankle; he had to reisst the urge to shudder. Deep water was a cause of concern for turians; their anatomy did not lend itself swimming. If Dex was glad of one thing, it was that his suit was airtight, so at least the cold water stayed outside the armour.  
'Right,' Dex said, 'we're nearly there.' The corner he wanted was at the next interchange. 'Let me just set something up.'  
'What are you doing?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex had dropped down to one knee. The Phaeston was on the floor in front of him. His instincts made him uneasy - if you had to do this on the battlefield, you made sure you had an ally covering you. But this was a task that needed both hands.  
'A drone,' he explained as he dug one of his drones from a pouch. 'I'm programming this for sentry duty.' He tapped a few keys on his omnitool.  
'Don't they wear out fast?' Krondesh asked.  
'I've got two more. Failing all else, my omnitool can fabricate new ones, too, though it takes a few minutes.' The drone beeped as the instructions uploaded to it. 'I'll just se this to hover at the end of the other corridor, as we get set up. Gives us a bit of early warning, in case of surprises.'  
'Prudent,' Krondesh agreed.  
Dex took the little drone and tossed it into the air. After a short distance, its eezo motor kicked in. It spun round and flew off down the designated corridor. Krondesh watched the drone go, then he looked beyond the corridor.  
'If we went on further, we could get behind Karrean and his friends,' Krondesh said.  
'We can't.' Dex pointed at the map. It was tiled on the omnitool display with the drone's sensor-images. 'See. This corridor's blocked off beyond the next intersection.'  
'Inconvenient,' Krondesh said. 'So no taking them from behind, then.'  
Dex stared at the krogan.  
'What?' Krondesh asked, sounding suspiciously-innocent.  
'Never mind,' Dex said. He checked his omnitool. 'Okay, according to Kat's schedule, they'll be here in a few minutes, so we'd better-'  
The omnitool buzzed.  
'Shit.' Dex looked at the screen. Two shadows were extending around the end of the corridor. The drone’s targetting VI had them flagged as suspicious.  
'What?' Krondesh asked.  
'Shhh!' Dex raised a finger in front of his lip. Then he pointed at a couple of bits of the shadows, then at the Phaeston on the ground.  
The shadows were people with assault rifles.  
The krogan nodded in sudden understanding.  
Did Krondesh know hand signals? Dex wasn't sure he wanted to risk speaking out loud. The armed shadows could be in hearing range. Dex pointed at the krogan, then he gestured for Krondesh to take cover at the corner.  
The krogan nodded, and moved into position. Inside his helmet, Dex breathed a sigh of relief. He reached down and picked up his Phaeston, pressing a digit onto the key for silent mode. Soundlessly, and with no electronic beeping, the gun unfolded.  
The drone reported more movement through another buzz of the omnitool.  
There were two mercs entering the corridor. They had each had an M15 Vindicator. Dex could see an armour-piercing mod on one and an extended barrel on the other. The mercs were both in full armour; their suits were painted in the Blue Suns' colours. Batarians, Dex guessed. Their body-shapes could possibly be consistent with humans too, but somehow Dex doubted that many humans would be willing to work with someone like Karrean.  
One of them looked up - straight at the drone. He pointed. Both of them fired.  
The screen blinked into static.  
Dex could hear the gunfure, rattling around the corner. The muzzle flashes threw sharp bursts of light onto the wall opposite.  
Dex looked up at Krondesh. The turian pointed at the corner, then mimed for a shockwave. He hoped he'd used the correct hand gestures.  
Krondesh nodded and turned round. A blue corona flared over him as he called up his barrier. Then the krogan leaned round the corner and made a throwing gesture.  
He ducked back as the shockwave roared off. As he ducked back Some wild shots passed overhead. Sparks sprayed from the wall behind.  
Then there was a thudding noise and started shouts.  
The krogan sprang round the corner and charged.  
Inside his helmet, Dex cursed. He should've realised Krondesh would do that! The mercs would certainly have friends - Krondesh would need fire support. Dex gripped his rifle and ran.  
He got to the corner just as he heard two shotgun blasts.  
He dropped to one knee and leaned around. Krondesh was stood there in the middle of the corridor, Katana in hand, over the bodies of two mercs. The scene was messy. Shotguns were not tidy weapons. In spite of himself, Dex was impressed. Between their armour and kinetic barriers, he wouldn't have expected the Katana to be able to take the mercs down so quickly. Then he remembered the shockwave. Of course! The krogan had used the force of the impact to weaken their barriers and fracture the armour-plates. Also it would have stunned the mercs, giving him an extra moment to line the shots up in just the right places.  
'Krondesh!' Dex risked speaking. 'Here! Now!'  
The krogan looked at him. Dex gestured sharply. The krogan ambled over. Dex reached out, grabbed the krogan's arm and dragged him behind the wall. Krondesh was too heavy to be dragged easily. Dex only managed it because he startled the big alien enough that he stumbled forward with the pull.  
'What-' Krondesh began.  
'Shut up,' Dex said, feeling the old habit of command taking over. 'We're in a fight. There'll be more of them very soon. No time for arguments.'  
Miracle of miracles, the krogan actually listened.  
'Follow me.' Dex gestured Krondesh after him. He sprinted back along the corridor. The mercs would certainly have friends who would have heard the commotion. They'd be at the junction in moments. Dex's plan was to fall back to the next junction.  
Then, when the mercs were pouring into the main entrance, he and Krondesh could flank them.  
'How did they find us so quick-' the krogan began.  
'Silence!' Dex barked. 'Not now! Questions later.'  
They reached the next passageway. Dex pointed down it, then sprinted off toward the intersection. Krondesh followed.  
As they got to the end, Dex dropped to one knee. 'Krondesh, go to the end of the alley. Stay behind the corner. Cover me while I get this drone set up.' He had to put his rifle down to do this. Krondesh started moving as Dex lowered his gun to the floor. Dex said, 'And do not charge unless I tell you to. Understood?'  
'You've gone all hardass all of a sudden,' the krogan complained. Nonetheless he took up station at the end of the passageway.  
'You were dealing with Dex the washout turian failure before,' Dex said as he fiddled with the drone. 'Now you're dealing with Dex the platoon sergeant from the Armiger Legion. Two completely different people.’  
'And how long do I have to put up with this platoon sergeant person?'  
'For as long as the shooting carries on,' Dex said. 'Now quite complaining and keep an eye on that corner. If anything with a gun comes round there, shoot it!'  
The drone was ready. Dex set it to record what it saw. He tossed it toward the end of the corridor. Its eezo motor engaged and the drone arced away. Dex picked up his rifle and stood up. He summoned the display on his omnitool.  
The drone's camera showed him the scene ahead. There was the collapsed hab block, all rubble and torn girders. There was the gap. And here were Karrean and his troops, already arrayed on this side of the obstruction! According to Kat's schedule, they weren't even due to arrive at the Gozu entrance for another ten minutes.  
According to Kat's schedule.  
'Fuck,' Dex said. 'We've been set up!'  
Karrean's men were bunkered down behind portable barriers they'd set up. Several of them had erected crude breastworks with rubble from the hab block. With a lurch of his stomach, Dex realised he could see the stubby shape of a grenade launcher and a flamethrower in the hands of two of the merc troopers.  
'What is it?' Krondesh asked.  
'Those two you just shot,' Dex said. 'They must have been a reconnaissance patrol. Karrean is here, in force. I'm counting - shit, I'm counting twenty-two mercs. Three seven-man squads, and a batarian who's with Karrean.' From the insignia on his suit, that guy was the Blue Suns commander. 'And there's more bad news. They're already bunkered down. Portable defensive emplacements. And they've got heavy weapons.'  
'They knew we were coming,' Krondesh said.  
'Yes,' Dex said. 'My drone's recording all of this to my omnitool. So we have our evidence.'  
'What now?' the krogan asked.  
'Two of us. Twenty four of them, counting the CO. And that's just the ones I can see. I reckon the two you plugged are part of a bigger recon squad. They'll have split into several teams, scouring the area and-'  
'Shit!' a new voice said. 'Boss, they're here! Sector B Three!'  
Dex whirled. At the other end of the passageway, toward the back corridor, two Blue Suns mercs had appeared. They were between Dex and Krondesh and escape. The turian and the krogan had themselves been flanked!  
The mercs brought their guns up.  
Dex dived to the floor. 'KRONDESH! SHOCKWAVE! ON YOUR SIX! NOW!' He barked out his best platoon sergeant’s voice even as he rolled to the floor.  
Krondesh spun round. The krogan saw the flankers and threw his shockwave at the them. The surge of biotic energy slammed into the pair of would-be attackers.  
They both screamed as they were tossed into the air.  
There was shouting from the street outside. Dex heard the thud-thud-thud of running boots on concrete. He heard a burst of gunfire and bellowed orders. The situation was fast spiralling out of control.  
He looked at the drone display, just in time for someone to shoot the drone out of the sky. Dex cursed. He grabbed a homing grenade from where they were hung on his breastplate. He tossed it around the corner, not even bothering to track where it landed.  
He heard a thump from somewhere beyond, followed by screams, shouts and curses.   
The grenade had found a target, it seemed.  
He pointed to the krogan, then pointed at the far end of the passageway. Dex sprang to his feet. They both started running, back toward the end.  
One of the two mercs lay sprawled on the ground. He'd landed badly - his head was at an unusual angle. He wouldn't be getting up again. The other one was struggling to his feet.  
For just a moment, the merc's helmet was turned Dex's way. The man's eyelenses seemed malevolent. The merc threw himself at Dex -  
-to be intercepted by a krogan tackle.  
The merc and Krondesh crashed to the ground. Before the merc could get out from underneath the massive krogan, Krondesh cracked him over the head with the barrel of his Katana. Kinetic barriers flared and died. Krondesh smacked him again, harder.  
Dex actually saw the dent appear in the merc's helmet. He heard a noise that might have been the skull underneath cracking. The merc flopped limply to the ground. Krondesh got up. He brushed some fragments of the Blue Suns paint off of his gun.  
Dex said to him, 'We're going back the way we came. No way can we take this lot.'  
He'd expected some argument from the massive krogan, but instead Krondesh just nodded. They both ran the remaining distance down the passageway, and back into the dark and puddle-strewn back corridor.  
To catch any possible pursuers from the next passage down, Dex tossed his remaining homing grenade toward that junction. He and the krogan ran as fast as they could, toward the hatch they'd opened before.  
Just as they reached the hatch, there was a flash of light and a roar of thunder from behind them.  
'Rocket!' Dex shouted.  
The pressure wave hit him. His kinetic barriers flared and he was lifted into the air. Along with the krogan, the blast bowled him out through the hatch.  
Dex hit the ground with an undignified thump.  
He lay there, stunned, for a moment. Shaking his head, he managed to struggle to his feet. Krondesh was already up. Dex's ears were ringing. He looked back, through the open hatch.  
A rocket had been fired down the passageway they'd occupied earlier. The far wall had a fat crater smashed into it. Rubble had sprayed everywhere. Apparently some of the debris was flammable - small fires were burning. Lazy curls of smoke hung over the scene.   
Of the two mercs Dex and Krondesh had just fought there was no sign. Mercs had no loyalty to each other, so it didn't surprise Dex that the misfortunate troopers' friends had been willing to shoot off a rocket at their last-known position.  
For that matter, mercs weren't necessarily that well-trained or that well-co-ordinated, either. Perhaps the person with the rocket launcher hadn't even known that there could have been allies down that passageway. Whatever the case, the bodies were gone. Blasted to smithereens, Dex supposed.  
Whatever else his other flaws as a person, Dex wouldn't do that to an ally.  
He looked at Krondesh, then pointed down the corridor, back the way they'd come. They started to run. With luck, the post-rocket confusion would buy them a few minutes to escape.  
As they ran, Krondesh asked, ‘Shouldn’t we take the big gang-run tube?’  
Dex shook his head. ‘No way. That’s what they must be planning. Their positions - the corridor-sweeping - it looks like they were trying to flush us that way. I guess the gangs who run it might’ve been paid off.’  
‘Shit,’ Krondesh said. ‘If we’d gone in there...’  
‘Bang, bang,’ Dex agreed.  
They pounded along the corridor, decking shaking beneath their feet. Dirty walls and rust-stained ducts swept past them on either side. Flickering panels passed by overhead.  
‘What’s the plan?’ Krondesh asked. ‘They’ll just chase us down this corridor.’  
‘How do you feel about large but smelly pipes?’  
‘I don’t much like them. Why?’  
‘Because we’re going to be taking a trip out through one of them,’ Dex said. ‘I know another route to get out of the Lower Warrens. I don’t think Karrean or Kat know it.’  
‘The shit on your boots,’ Krondesh said.  
Dex nodded. ‘The shit on my boots. Yes. The only other alternative I can think of is to go back out on the hull.’  
‘But - my rebreather canisters are dead!’  
‘Mine aren’t. Yet. You could take one of my two. Split between us we’d have about forty minutes’ breathing-time each. Mine are calibrated for Palaven’s atmosphere, of course, but your lungs could cope with it.’  
‘You didn’t mention this before,’ Krondesh said.  
‘I didn’t think of it. And anyway, the canisters are inside the helmets. We’d have to take them off to change them. Wouldn’t work so well outside the station.’  
‘Good point,’ Krondesh said. Their feet pounded on the floor below, setting up an echoing rattle around them. Dex was breathing hard inside his helmet and he was more aware than ever of the familiar rubber-and-metal scent of the breathing mask.  
‘Also, if we went back outside, where would we go? And how would we get the door open without setting up a nasty new hull breach?’  
‘More good points.’  
‘Basically there’s one game in town, and it’s called the sewer.’  
‘Your logic is depressingly-irrefutable, bird. So, which way?’  
Dex consulted his map. They were far enough from the ambush-site that perhaps he could risk slowing down a bit.  
‘Damn,’ he said.  
‘Damn?’ the krogan asked.  
‘There’s a relatively easy path to where we need to go,’ Dex said, ‘but apparently it’s on the other side of that wall.’ He pointed at the wall opposite. It looked quite solid.  
Krondesh shrugged. ‘Not a problem. Stand back.’  
Having really very little idea what the krogan was going to do one minute to the next, Dex did what he was told. Krondesh performed a different mnemonic gesture this time. His biotic corona lit up, and a burst of energy leapt out from it.  
The warp field splashed across the wall. Twisted and tugged by rapidly-oscillating gravitational fields, a section of the wall started to buckle and bend. Dex stared as it weakened before his eyes. A visible heathaze was rising from the plating as the dark energy field’s energy was converted into kinetic energy and then into heat by the friction within the wall as its component particles were forced to grind against each other.  
‘Doing so much of this makes me hungry,’ the krogan said. ‘I could murder a nice juicy steak!’  
He really did sound ravished too. Dex was abruptly rather glad that his bodily proteins had a dextro chirality. Turians did not constitute a good snack-food for krogan.  
Krondesh wasn’t done yet.  
He stepped back from the wall, then he performed the shockwave mnemonic. Dex wondered what in the name of the spirits the krogan was doing. The shockwave thundered out, straight into the dissipating warp field that was still chewing at the wall.  
It exploded.  
A deafening roar filled the air. Dex staggered back as a new pressure wave swept over him. Bits and pieces of wall were hurled all around them. His kinetic barriers flashed as several of them rattled off his suit. Dex’s ears were ringing.  
‘KRONDESH!’ he barked in his best sergeant’s voice. ‘WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING?’  
Intimidating a krogan was apparently a waste of time. Krondesh just shrugged. ‘You needed to get through the wall, so I made a nice big hole in it.’  
There was indeed. The uncontrolled detonation of the two dark-energy fields had blasted a hole clean through the wall into the next corridor. The torn edges of the wall-panels were still smouldering.  
‘You didn’t mention this outside,’ Dex said.  
‘The hull is twenty centimetres thick,’ Krondesh said. ‘The force is only enough to penetrate about five at most. It wouldn’t have helped us outside. These panels are usually less than three thick, though. Also the more flashy biotics I do, the faster I use my oxygen. Metabolism, you know.’  
‘Okay,’ Dex sighed. ‘Next time, warn me first, okay?’ He walked forward and ducked through the hole. Krondesh followed.  
The trip to the derelict pumping-room and the former Waypoint lair took another forty-five minutes. The whole time both of the pair were on edge, expecting to be cornered by their pursuers, but it didn’t happen. It seemed they’d given Karrean’s gang the slip.  
With some relief, they entered the old pumping station. Dex saw all the familiar derelict machinery. There were even some scorch marks and dried blood stains left over from his last visit. The bodies and the slagged guns, he noticed, had vanished. Best not to ask what had happened to them. It wasn’t like there was that much spare food down in the Lower Warrens, after all.  
On the far side of the room was what they needed: the big sewer pipe with its big hole.  
‘There,’ Dex said, pointing. ‘We can go now.’  
Was that a noise, somewhere in the room?  
‘Hey,’ Krondesh said, ‘I thought I heard movement.’  
‘There are lots of rats here,’ Dex said. ‘Earth rodents. They came with the humans. It’s probably one of them.’ He started forward. Krondesh followed.  
‘Not so fast, you fucking alien scum,’ a voice said from behind them.  
Oh, shit. Dex froze, then turned very slowly.  
He was confronted by a human boy who’d just emerged from the maze of pipes to their left. No, not just any human boy - it was the kid whose life Dex had spared the other day. The kid had acquired a Predator pistol from somewhere, and he was holding it in one wobbly hand. He was aiming at Dex and Krondesh.  
Dex cursed himself for being a bad soldier and not sweeping the room properly first. Today had offered too much effort and too many surprises, and he was getting tired. He realised that he was hungry and in need of the toilet.  
And there was now a human pointing a gun at them.  
The kid had a crazed look in his eyes. ‘You killed my friends,’ he said. ‘Fucking bird. I’m going to fucking skrag you, and your fat alien bastard friend.’  
‘Fat?’ Krondesh sounded surprised. ‘Alien, well that’s a matter of perspective, but yes, to you. Bastard - well, I suppose I was hatched out of wedlock, so arguably true. But fat? Really?’ Krondesh looked down, then up again, as if astonished that anyone could make that accusation.  
Carefully, Dex said, ‘Look, I know you’ve got perfectly good reason to hate me, but you and your friends did try to mug me. And I did let you live.’  
‘Stop it, stop it, stop it, you fucking alien shithead!’  
Apparently appealing to reason wasn’t getting them anywhere. ‘Also, on my left here is a krogan, who’s already killed several people today. And he was claiming to be hungry earlier, so he might just be eyeing you up for a snack. I mean, you have compatible chemistry and all that, so...’  
Pure hate flared in the kid’s eyes. He pulled the trigger.  
Dex’s kinetic barriers flared and he was knocked back. He rolled to the floor in a clatter of equipment.  
Krondesh took matters into his own hands.  
Another shockwave-blast rolled out. This one was noticeably smaller and weaker than the others, but its target had neither armour nor shields. It was still enough.  
The kid got off a single, brief scream as his body was smashed back into the pipes. Dex heard the cracks and snaps of multiple bones as they were shattered. The light faded from the kid’s eyes as his corpse slid to the floor. The Predator spun through the air, landing with a clatter on the far side of the room.  
Dex realised that his earlier attempt at mercy had merely succeeded in delaying the inevitable. It seemed that some people were not fated by the spirits to survive.  
Dex felt very tired. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here,’ he said, weariness seeping through him.  
‘Okay. Where are we going?’  
‘My apartment. Kat doesn’t know where it is. We can hide out there for a little while.’  
They entered the pipe.  
The trip back to Dex’s apartment was smelly and unpleasant, but otherwise uneventful. The only aliens they encountered were a few terrestrial rodents, and those were curious rather than hostile. Apart from some chittering and whisker-wriggling, the rats took no action toward the pair.  
At last they found themselves in the corridor outside Dex’s apartment.  
‘Here we are,’ Dex said, gesturing to the door. ‘Number Four-Five-Six-Eight, Corridor Nine-Oh-Two, Level Forty-Five. Gozu District. My home for the last eight months.’  
‘Doesn’t look like much,’ Krondesh said.  
It didn’t. The door was the usual bland Omegan metal. Dex brought up his omnitool and reached forward to engage the haptic field.  
The door slid open.


	9. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krondesh gets to annoy a turian by running up his water bill. Dex stubbornly refuses to be irritated. Krondesh is surprised by a free gun. Then hints of the horrible truth about their erstwhile employer start to emerge.
> 
> The beginnings of a new plan are formulated...

‘Shut the door,' Dex said.  
'If you insist.' Krondesh banged the panel next to the door. The prefabricated wall-panels rattled. Dex winced.  
With a quiet whir, the door closed.  
'Okay,' Dex said. 'First things' first. If you want a drink, the kitchen is over there. The food's all dextro, so it's probably no good for you, sorry.'  
The krogan hesitated. Then he said, 'Actually, I need the bathroom.'  
'That's over there,' Dex said, pointing. He wondered for a moment what a krogan bathroom looked like. Then it occurred to him that he might be better off not knowing.  
The krogan looked at the narrow door. ‘That one? It looks small.’  
‘That’s because it is. I couldn’t manage the rent on anywhere larger.’  
'Okay. I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.' Krondesh turned and lumbered over to the bathroom.. A moment later, the door closed behind the big alien reptile. Dex wondered how the massive krogan would cope in the tight space.  
It was quite small in there.  
A muffled crash, a bang, a rattle and a string of Tuchankan obscenities suggested that the krogan was having difficulties. The turian had to resist the urge to smile.  
Since they were inside, and probably safe for the moment, Dex pulled his helmet off. Cool air played over his face. He deposited the helmet and the assault rifle on the bed. The springs creaked under the sudden weight. Ignoring them for the moment, Dex turned and walked over to his armoury. A moment later he was ensconced in the room.  
He took the Phalanx down from the wall mount and loaded it with a fresh thermal clip. He selected a couple of new grenades and hooked them onto his breastplate. Then he went to the lockers. Digging around in the drawers found him a set of fresh gas exchange cylinders. Dex pocketed several for himself, and several for Krondesh. Lastly he loaded up on spare thermal clips. He left the armoury, taking the Phalanx with him. He locked the door behind him.  
The krogan was still busy in the bathroom. Apparently he was doing more than visiting the toilet. Dex could hear what sounded very much like the shower.  
Dex suddenly wondered how long ago it had been since the last time Krondesh had been able to wash. This would add to Dex’s water bill, but he decided not to begrudge the alien the indulgence.  
The turian noted to himself to make sure that the towels were laundered before he next used them, though.  
While Krondesh did whatever it was that he was doing, Dex poured himself a glass of water. He drank quickly. Then he dug out a ready meal. It didn't taste great when eaten cold, but he needed food more than he needed flavour. He made short work of it. The quickly-chewed meal hit his stomach, dulling the sensation of hunger.  
He was feeling somewhat renewed when he heard the sound of the flush in the bathroom. It was shortly followed by more banging, grunting and half-muffled cursing. Presumably the krogan was getting dressed again.  
A little bit later, the door opened and an armoured krogan emerged. Krondesh had removed his helmet; the apartment's lights gleamed on his violet plates. He was holding it under one arm.  
'Better?' Dex asked.  
Krondesh shrugged. 'It'll do for now. Can I get a drink?'  
Dex pointed to the sink. 'Glasses are in the cupboard beneath it.'  
'Hold this.' Krondesh handed Dex his helmet.  
The krogan walked over, dug out a glass and poured himself a glassfull. The stream of water tinkled onto the glass as it fell from the faucet. He gulped the water down. He put the glass back on the draining board, with a clunk, and then he burped.  
Dex winced.  
'What?' the krogan asked.  
'Nothing,' Dex sighed. 'Anyway, Krondesh, today's your lucky day.'  
'Is it?' the krogan said, looking sceptical.  
'Yes. Here's a new gun. On the house.' Dex held out the Phalanx, holding it by the barrel.  
Krondesh blinked, but took the gun. 'Any particular reason?'  
'It doesn't hurt to have a spare,' Dex said. 'Also, while we're at it, here are a couple of new gas exchange cylinders for your suit.' He passed over two of the little tubes. Krondesh had attached the pistol to his belt, on the opposite side from his ornate knife. He then set about tearing open the foil wrappers around the gas exchangers, then installing them into his helmet.  
'They're calibrated for Palaven's atmosphere,' Dex told him, 'but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. In theory each one of them is good for two hours for a turian. Your metabolism's obviously different, so I don't know what that will translate into. I'm guessing less time, given that you're larger than me.'  
'My magnificent krogan bulk,' Krondesh agreed.  
'Whatever the duration is, it'll be better than the bust exchangers from earlier.'  
'Quite,' Krondesh said. He held up one of the used cylinders. 'What should I do with these?'  
'Just leave them by the sink,' Dex said. 'I'll worry about them later.'  
The krogan tossed them negligently over. They landed with a metallic rattle and rolled a short distance before coming to a holt.  
Dex passed the krogan's helmet back. Krondesh set about fitting the new cylinders into place. After a bit of fiddling he said, 'Okay, done.' He looked up expectantly at Dex. 'Now what?'  
Dex sighed. He walked over to the bed and sat down, next to the Phaeston. The springs protested again. 'I think we can take it as a given,' he said, 'that Kat wants us dead.'  
The krogan nodded. 'Yeah, I'd say.'  
'We can also take it as a given,' Dex said, 'that Karrean knew we were coming.'  
'It also seems we were fed false intelligence,' Krondesh added. 'There were more of them than Kat suggested. And they were much better armed.'  
'And they were early,' Dex said. 'Basically, she's gone to a lot of trouble to get us killed. What I want to know is, why?'  
He shifted on the mattress. The springs protested. Overhead, air sighed through the vents.  
Krondesh was silent for a moment. Then the krogan said, 'Do we know something that could hurt her?'  
Dex shrugged. 'We know that she's planted bombs in a transit tube. We know that she rigged the skycar to blow. We know that she has some sort of relationship with Karrean.'  
'Yes, but why and how?' Krondesh asked. 'Also, what hard evidence do we have that she bombed the tube? I mean, I don't doubt it either, but how could we prove it?'  
Dex nodded, feeling depressed. Once more, the krogan was right. 'if Kat's damaging the station itself,' Dex said, 'that adds an extra complication. T'Loak's organisation will be very interested in that.'  
'We'll have to talk to them,' Krondesh said. 'Or we might find ourselves in their sights.'  
'And we don't want that,' Dex said. 'Hang on, I have an idea. One thing we can check...' He called up his omnitool.  
'What are you doing?' Krondesh asked.  
'I had my omnitool linked to the line when we called Kat,' Dex said. 'That was just before the skycar blew.' His fingers were moving across the keys, inputting instructions. 'Maybe there's a locally-cached version of the code ... yes! Here it is!' A glowing mass of code appeared in the air.  
Krondesh stared blankly at the characters. 'I hope that means something to you, bird,' he said.  
Dex peered at it. 'Goodness,' he said. 'Oh my goodness.'  
'Well?'  
'Well isn't this interesting. It's set up to create an overload in the power circuits in that big airlock thing.'  
'What would that do?'  
'Normally, nothing. Perhaps a shower of sparks. But the code's got some comments in it. Listen to this. "This section will create an overload. The current will conduct through the hull, to the rear compartment. The conducted current will detonate explosives in the compartment".'  
'The airlock was booby-trapped?'  
'No. The airlock was the booby-trap. Oh Kat, you sly person. You put the detonator in plain sight!'  
Enlightenment dawned on Krondesh's face. 'And of course we'd never dream of tampering with an airlock.'  
'And if we did, we'd find nothing, as the actual exploding bit was in the back.'  
'Yes,' Dex agreed. 'We wouldn't. So we'd never know anything was amiss. Until the explosion. And that would be too late.'  
'A backup,' Krondesh said, 'in case the bomb in the tunnel failed.'  
'Yes. And then there were the false maps, the non-existent airlock on the hull. Kat is the common factor in all of this.'  
‘She could have just killed us separately,’ Dex said. ‘Set her usual thugs on us.’  
‘Would that have worked?’ Krondesh said.  
Dex thought back to the cheap mercs that Kat tended to hire at her dealership. ‘Probably not,’ he said. If any of them had ever made a move on him, he certainly wouldn’t have held back.  
‘The only way that would work,’ Krondesh said, ‘was if she took us on herself. With her biotics. And that would expose her to direct risk.’  
Dex nodded. ‘And Kat’s not dumb enough to take that chance. All I need is one lucky shot. Or a clear line of fire for my drone. And I guess all you need is a shockwave.’  
‘A warp-blast, more likely,’ Krondesh said. ‘But yeah, it’s no wonder she didn’t risk taking us on directly, even when we were at the dealership. Fact is, we’re both two dangerous pieces of shit. You kill things in a very cold-blooded and calculating way. And I have anger issues. And I’d like to take them out on someone.’ He shrugged. His amour rattled as he moved. ‘No wonder she wanted to use something indirect, like a bomb.’  
Dex nodded. ‘You’re right. Again.’  
'Yeah, being right’s a bad habit of mine,’ Krondesh said. ‘Her only realistic chance was to try and take us both out in one nice bang. But it brings us back to the question of motive. Why try it in the first place? Why kill us?'  
Dex shook his head. 'I honestly have no idea.  
'The Finch,' Krondesh said. 'She headhunted both of us. Do you think she might know something?'  
'Possible,' Dex said. 'Honestly I think it's unlikely, though. The Finch is just a fixer. Hired help.’  
'But what could we know?' The krogan looked frustrated. 'I don't like unsolved puzzles.' He cocked his head to one side, thinking. 'Wait, maybe there is one approach we could take.'  
'What would that be?' Dex asked.  
Krondesh walked over to the sink. He rinsed a glass under the tap. The water hissed and tinkled over it. The krogan then half-filled the glass. He turned the tap off. He took a sip from the glass. Then he said, 'Let's review how we both ended up with Kat. Perhaps there's something in common.'  
'Okay,' Dex said. 'You first.'  
Krondesh shrugged. 'Honestly? There's not much to tell. I told you about the mugging. What I didn't tell you was that it was actually other krogan.'  
Dex blinked. His mandibles moved. 'Other krogan? Why?'  
Krondesh didn't look at Dex. He stared at the sink and then the taps, then he looked down at the glass. He shook it. The remaining water sloshed. A few drops splashed out. He put the glass down on the draining board. It clinked on the metal. 'I was made Clanless before I left Tuchanka,' he said. 'That's what the purple paint is about. It's a mark of shame.'  
Dex hesitated. 'I get the feeling this might be the wrong question,' he said. 'I'm   
going to ask it anyway. You could wash it off?'  
Krondesh's head turned and fixed and fixed Dex with a glare. 'How did you feel the first time you painted your false face?'  
False face. Dex winced. 'Not good,' he admitted. Somewhere in the ceiling, a pipe groaned as a bubble of air worked its way through the station’s plumbing.  
'Well, if I wash my mark off, I’m telling the world that I have no dishonour,' Krondesh said. 'I'm not honoured, and I know it. I won’t lie about it.'  
'So ... these other krogan mugged you because you're Clanless?'  
'Strictly, they didn't mug me,' Krondesh said. 'Clanless are nothing. No rights, no personhood. No power. A Clanless can't be said to own anything. As far as other krogan are concerned, they can do what they like to us. So of course they guys did. If I'd stayed on the homeworld, I'd have probably been killed by now.'  
'How did you get off?' Dex asked.  
'I talked my way onto an alien trading ship,' Krondesh said. 'Told them I'd be the captain's bodyguard if they took me off Tuchanka.'  
'Were you the captain's bodyguard?'  
Krondesh shrugged. 'For all of a week. After we got to Omega he found himself a friendly prostitute. She got my berth on the ship. It left without me. They didn't even tell me they were going. I just found a message on a public terminal under my account.'  
'A public - wait, you don't have an omnitool?'  
'Of course not. Why spend the credits? It would just get taken by other krogan.'  
'Did you ... want to go with the ship?'  
'Not really,' Krondesh said. 'The captain was an idiot. So was the first mate. The other crew were scum. And the ship stank of piss. No books anywhere, manuals aside. Not my scene. To be honest, I wasn't that upset. Plus they forgot to ask for the shotgun back.'  
'Wow, they really were idiots.'  
'Yeah. Dumb fucks. Good riddance to them. I was stuck here, so I figured I wanted to go to university. I bummed around for a few years doing odd jobs and sleeping in any old corner. I'd just got the cash together for the entrance exam when the inevitable happened.' Krondesh shrugged. 'Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. The galaxy offers few opportunities for krogan, and none for Clanless.'  
'How did you ... no, forget I spoke. I have no right to ask that question.'  
'You were going to ask how I ended up Clanless,' Krondesh said. The krogan thought about it. Then an idea seemed to occur to him. 'Okay. I'll tell you. One of my brood-brothers was going to study under a battlemaster. I know that doesn't sound like much to an alien, but to a krogan, it's about as good as things get. You shadow the battlemaster for a few decades, fight his fights, do whatever he wants. He trains you. When he thinks you're ready, you can take the Rite of Battle Mastery. After that ... well, at the end of it you'll be one of the toughest, most skilled warriors out there. As a merc you can charge whatever you damn well want. You can actually get rich - and there aren't many ways krogan can do that. Other krogan will look up to you. Clan lords will beg you to join their territory. You may even get a chance to breed. And aliens will piss themselves every time you meet them. What's not to like?'  
‘And other krogan respect you?’ Dex hazarded. ‘As a battlemaster, I mean?’  
‘Of course,’ Krondesh said.  
‘But ... that’s your brother. The battlemaster. Where do you fit into this?’  
‘No.’ Krondesh shook his head. ‘My brother’s dead. He’d been working with Battlemaster Alrateg for a while, of course. Eight years, in fact. But he needed to take the Rite of Passage before he could be formally-apprenticed. That’s a proper oath, sworn before the Spirits of the Ancestors. Only adult krogan can do that. It’s not for children. So he had to take the Rite. Me and two others of our brood-siblings were going to be his krantt. It would have been the Rite for all of us, in fact. There were four of us. We set out together, expecting to come back as adults.’  
'So what happened?' Dex asked.  
'The clan's head shaman set us a quest,' Krondesh said. 'We had to go to the Northern Ocean, so my brother could wash himself in it.'  
Dex blinked. 'The point of that was ... what?' He supposed krogan cleanliness was something to be encouraged, but this sounded like a lot of trouble just for a bath.  
Krondesh sighed. He looked irritated. 'I knew explaining this to an alien would be trouble! The Northern Ocean is in the north polar basin - it's outside the Shroud's shadow track. So the water is always warm. Because the equatorial seas get shaded every day, they're actually a bit cooler than the Northern, despite the lower latitudes.'  
Dex blinked. 'You have a weird climate.'  
'Thank the salarians for that,' Krondesh said. 'Or better yet, kill them all. Anyway, by tradition the water is said to be "warmer than blood".'  
Dex was puzzled. 'But that would make it-'  
'Remember that we're reptiles,' Krondesh said. 'So a lot of the time, the water actually is warmer than our blood. And because of that heat, it's been symbolically linked to violence. Heat and anger and violence are common mythological motifs across the galaxy, and in this we're no exception.'  
Dex was reminded that he was dealing with that rarest of entities: a well-read krogan.  
'So,' he said, 'the Northern Ocean is linked to war?'  
Krondesh nodded. 'We have an odd relationship with the seas. They're small, many krogan never even see them in their lives, and we don't swim too well. So they're dangerous and mysterious for us. So the seas in general are linked to death in our myth-cycle. According to tradition, when you're on water and out of sight of land, the physical and spiritual worlds become one. And the shore is a sort of liminal zone, where you can commune with the Honoured Ancestors.'  
'So ... you go to the beach to talk to the dead?' Dex felt his mandibles move. 'I suppose that's no weirder than humans, though. I've heard they like beaches because they think swimming is fun.'  
Krondesh shook his head. 'That's mammals for you. Having your blood at one constant temperature obviously can't be good for the brain. It must keep overheating!'  
'They're all mad,' Dex agreed.  
'Anyway, the Northern Ocean is seen as a good place to seek the blessing of the spirits of great warriors,' Krondesh said. 'That's why the shaman wanted my brother to go there.'  
'Okay,' Dex allowed. 'That makes some sense, I guess.'  
'It's a long journey,' Krondesh said, 'and dangerous enough to make it meaningful as the Rite. But we never got there.'  
'What happened?'  
'Forty miles beyond the border of my clan - my former clan's lands, we got attacker. Raiders. Probably Clanless themselves. You sometimes get bands forming, out in the wastes. Anyway we fought, but they outnumbered us. And they had better guns.' Krondesh shrugged. 'My brother told me to go back and get help, so I did.'  
'And you got help?'  
'The first person I ran into was a rival of my father's. A party was raised, but by then the krantt were all dead. The rival told the shaman they'd died because I'd abandoned them. It was my word against his. The battlemaster was furious that his would-be pupil was a corpse now, and he backed the rival. It was my word against theirs'. And no way was the shaman going to alienate a battlemaster. Least of all one who had the Clan Lord's ear. I was blamed, and they made me Clanless.' Krondesh pointed at his headplates.  
Dex was horrified. 'That's just a political hanging!' he said.  
Krondesh shrugged. 'Yes.' The plates of his armour rattled as he moved.  
'Couldn't you appeal?'  
The krogan sighed. 'Do you think Tuchanka is somewhere with a constitution? Or a formalised judicial system? With rules and records and pretentions to fairness?'  
'I ... suppose not.'  
'No. I could, in theory, denounce the battlemaster as a slanderer. But he would have the right to demand a Duel of Honour. And I'd certainly lose. Wouldn’t even be enough left of me to scrape up on the floor. Alrateg was going on five hundred. Tough as old boots, and not a square inch on him without a scar.'  
‘Shit,’ Dex said.  
‘Quite,’ Krondesh agreed. ‘You know bird, it seems to me that we have something in common.’  
Dex blinked. ‘We do?’  
‘We’ve both been screwed over by people and systems we should have been able to trust. Your army manufactured a lose-lose situation for you, then threw you to the varren. My Clan smashed my eggs and fucked me four ways from the sea. And both of us are having a mess of a time trying to rebuild our lives.’  
Dex nodded. ‘I guess you’re right,’ he said. ‘Imagine that - a Clanless krogan and a disgraced turian soldier sharing life-problems!’  
‘And we share another one,’ Krondesh said. ‘Kat. And her efforts to kill us.’  
'You said about how we got into this mess,' Dex said.  
Krondesh nodded. 'After I was mugged I was living rough. I ended up in the Lower Warrens.'  
'Difficult,' Dex said.  
Krondesh said, 'I supported myself with odd jobs. Someone needs intimidating, or someone's feeling nervous about a meeting and they want a big scary krogan lurking behind them.' Krondesh raised his arms into a pounce-gesture, fingers outstretched.  
'Granted it panders to all the stereotypes, but I could do the "Raaah!" thing when necessary. Raah!' He leaned forward.  
Dex’s vision was filled with krogan. Krondesh was silhouetted against the room’s lights. In spite of himself, Dex flinched back.  
'Did it ever actually get violent?' he asked.  
Krondesh dropped his arms with a rattle of armour. He shrugged. 'A few times. Nothing really significant. I had to punch a few people. Used my biotics on a couple of jobs.'  
'How did you feel?'  
'I hated it. The Warrens are cold and wet. I was hungry a lot. And there are no books. I hoarded the credits I had. Riots break out pretty often down there. When things got really rough out on the streets, I'd go into that club. Hide from the chaos for a while.'  
'The B&A.'  
'Yes.'  
'Did you have any trouble with the guards?'  
'The other krogan? Actually the first time I went there, the Blood Pack guys tried to recruit me. Even with my purple plates.'  
'Were you tempted?'  
'Yes, but...' Krondesh looked pained. 'Back on Tuchanka I remember four of my broodmates joined the Pack. All of them were dead within two years. It seemed like a waste. And I can't imagine that the odds would be any better on Omega. I was miserable on the streets, but at least I was alive. So I said no. They didn't ask twice. I figure, if we don’t get ourselves shot, we krogan can live for centuries. Eventually something might change for me, if I manage to survive long enough.'  
'Going to the B&A must have cost you,' Dex said.  
'Yes. Every time I went in there it basically wiped out my savings. When I was in there I'd asked around about jobs. One time, I got pointed at the Finch.'  
Dex nodded slowly. 'She mentioned something about you, actually, the last time I saw her.'  
'This would've been a few months ago,' Krondesh said. 'She offered me a slot on a krogan guard team. We were to transport a crate of special guns from the Kima docks up to Kat's headquarters.'  
'Special guns?'  
'Sniper rifles,' Krondesh said. 'HMWSGs, in fact. Most of the guys on the team had no idea what they were. Krogan don't snipe much.'  
Dex felt a cold shiver. 'HMWSGs?' he said. 'You're sure?'  
'Yes,' Krondesh said. 'When I could get on a public terminal in the Warrens, I'd been reading up about the Citadel's weapons trade. The Council are a complete bunch of hypocrites, you know? They have this special licensed factory where they make high-end guns for their Spectres.'  
'They used to,' Dex corrected. 'It got shot up badly during the geth invasion. Believe me, I saw it happen.'  
'They preach peace,' Krondesh said, 'but they were peddling guns to their favourites.'  
Dex winced. 'And making their favourites buy from their other favourites. I have some horror stories about military procurement. My careerist CO's family was in that business.'  
Krondesh said, 'War has an economic dimension. There's money in violence, at least for some.'  
'Of course,' Dex pointed out, 'I suppose both of us have no legs to stand on there. We're both good customers of the gun shops.'  
Krondesh shrugged. 'You can't blame individuals for trying to survive. No amount of personal virtue can fix a broken economy. And it’s not like avoiding violence is that easy on Omega. I think all either of us want to do is to keep breathing.'  
Dex wasn't so sure that was true of Krondesh, but he was feeling diplomatic, so he nodded. 'So you and some other krogan took a shipment of HMWSGs to Kat? Spectre guns? You're definite they were HMWSGs?'  
'Yes,' Krondesh said. 'Why?'  
'I'm going to take a wild guess here. The other krogan you were working with, on this shipment job. They all turned up dead not long afterward?'  
Krondesh leaned forward. 'You think that's connected? I thought it was just another gang fight.'  
Dex nodded, mandibles flexing. 'My first job with Kat,' he said, 'was when she was going to Afterlife to meet with Aria. She was apparently feeling nervous - this was just after she'd sacked the Blue Suns from policing her organisation. When I talked to the Finch, she said that Kat was looking for hired guns because she felt unsafe. The Finch said she thought the Suns might do a revenge hit on her.'  
'Dubious,' Krondesh said. 'That's not really their MO. As long as you pay the full amount owed to them, they probably won't care that much. It's just business. Besides, you might change your mind and hire them again at some point. Can't do that if you're dead. Now the Blood Pack, they might do a revenge hit. But even for them it would be a poor idea.'  
Dex said, 'I was hired to keep Kat covered, with my Mantis. The meeting was outside Afterlife. Apparently Kat was in bad odour with T'Loak at that point, so she wasn't allowed inside. I was up in one of the apartments opposite, keeping watch.'  
Krondesh's eyes narrowed. 'When was this?'  
'From the dates you said,' Dex replied, 'it would've been about two days after you delivered those HMWSGs to Kat.'  
'Wasn't there an attempted hit on T'Loak around then? Oh, no.'  
'Oh, yes,' Dex said. 'There was indeed. Someone with a sniper rifle. And it made a sound I recognised. A HMWSG.'  
'Shit.'  
'Yes. I know that sound because my platoon played bodyguard to a Spectre once. He had one of those. And we covered them in Weapons Recognition training.'  
'And how many HWSGs do you think there are on Omega?'  
'Fuck all,' Dex said. 'Particularly now that the factory's been destroyed. Kat must have got that box on the black market, and it must have cost her dear.'  
'She won't have liked that.'  
'No, she won't have. Anyway, T'Loak survived the hit. Turns out she has a fuck-off powerful barrier. I guess that's why she felt safe going out in public. When the shot rang out, the plaza went nuts. I wanted to get paid, so I grabbed my Phaeston, shouldered the Mantis, ran down there and helped Kat get out alive.'  
'She kept you close after that.'  
Dex nodded. 'Then a few weeks ago, while I was on a job, my Mantis's thermal clip blew a leak. Nothing like red-hot molten coolant to wreak delicate electronics! I came back to Kat's HQ and was patching it while she debriefed me. I mentioned I needed a new gun. And I said there was some bastard on Omega with a HMWSG, and I felt jealous of them.'  
'Did she react?'  
'Yes. I didn't connect it at the time, but she went very still and looked at me. Closely. She said something like, "What HMWSG?" And I reminded her about the assassination.'  
'Which must have been done with one of the HMWSGs we carted in,' Krondesh said.  
'Paid for by Kat,' Dex agreed.  
'The madwoman's attempted a hit on Aria,' Krondesh said.  
'And between us, we have the pieces of the jigsaw that links her to it,' Dex said. 'And the attempt failed. So now she knows that we could work it out...'  
'She needs us dead,' Krondesh said. 'As fast as possible.'  
'Get us together, blow us up in the tunnel. If that doesn't work, rig the skycar to blow. Failing that, give us false directions so we can't re-enter the station and will presumably die out there on the hull. And if we somehow do get back in...'  
'...Tip Karrean off so that his people can shoot us for her,' Krondesh said.  
For a moment, they were both silent. Dex realised there was water dripping from the tap. In the quiet, he could hear the steady plip-plip-plip. He walked over and screwed the faucet tighter. Inside it a washer squealed. Then the dripping stopped.  
‘Fuck,’ Krondesh said.  
‘Yes,’ Dex said. ‘We basically are, aren’t we?’  
‘Kat probably knows we’re still alive by now,’ Krondesh said.  
‘No way will she leave us alone,’ Dex said.  
‘Let me think,’ Krondesh said. He frowned, visibly musing. ‘You know, our best bet might be to go to T’Loak. Tell her people what we know.’  
‘But we don’t really have any hard evidence,’ Dex said.  
‘Then we need to get that evidence,’ Krondesh said. ‘Kat must have files. Correspondence logs - she must have talked to Karrean at some point! Maybe even some leftovers from the bomb she used on the transit tube.’  
‘How? How do we get it? She’s not going to give us the evidence.’  
‘That’s simple. We do the last thing Kat would be expecting. We break into her headquarters.’


	10. Strike Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A turian and a krogan gather their scattered wits, and debate their next course of action. A strategy is derived; it involves powerful lasers and a back door into Kat’s headquarters. Floors are burned through, coolant has to be employed, and a surprise is encountered…

'Okay,' Dex said. 'But first thing's first. You've had your turn in the bathroom. Now it's mine. And then we're going to find something for you to eat.'  
'What, straight after you've been on the toilet? Yuck!'  
'Well I recall you were complaining about wanting to murder a steak earlier.'  
'Yes, but I always want to murder things. It doesn't mean I'm really serious.'  
Dex sighed. Instead of answering the krogan, he walked over to the bathroom. He shut the door behind him.  
As well as needing to make a visit, Dex wanted to see what state the krogan had left it in. Dex's suspicions proved accurate - there was still some water in the bottom of the shower, and the showerhead was dripping a little. The krogan had also used several of the towels. Surprisingly, they'd been folded neatly and put on their racks.  
The walls had a couple of new scratches. Dex guessed they must have been made when Krondesh had struggled out of his combat suit in the small space. Elbows, knees and headplates, colliding with the walls and the walls coming off second best. Something else Dex's landlord would bill him for, no doubt.  
That said, his landlord was the least of his troubles right now. A murderous and psychopathic ex-employer had to be a bigger issue than a dented bathroom!  
Dex did his business, then changed back into his armour. He could go in the suit if he absolutely had to, of course - it was designed with long-term occupancy in mind - but he preferred not to resort to such things if avoidable. Doing that would require changing out a particular storage bladder some time in the near future, and that was always a gross job.  
He was just about to leave the bathroom when his reflection caught his eye. There he was, poised by the door, reflected in the mirror over the small sink. He noticed that the paint on his face was smudged. Apparently the day's excitement had made a mess of it.  
For a moment Dex hesitated, reaching up to wipe at the smears. Then he felt a surge of rebellion. Stuff it. The paint could stay smeared. What did he owe to the Hierarchy and its traditions anyway? It wasn't like he would ever be going home.  
His hand dropped back down.  
He shook his head, opened the door, and stepped out.  
Krondesh was waiting over by the sink. 'You do realise,' the krogan said, 'my credit chit was in the other pants?'  
'So I'm paying for lunch, then?'  
'Damn right you are. Unless you want a hungry miserable krogan moping along behind you?'  
Krondesh's words sounded flippant and his tone was the usual sarcasm, but Dex noted an uneasy look in the alien's eyes. Apparently the turian was getting better at reading alien expressions.  
A thought occurred to Dex. Krondesh was flippant and sarcastic as a defence mechanism. The krogan had been betrayed and abandoned so many times that he'd come to expect it. What a miserable life he must have led. On some level, the krogan actually did think that Dex might leave him hungry. That was rather sad. Dex realised he was actually feeling sorry for a krogan. This was proving to be a very strange day.  
'Well,' he said, 'we couldn't have you moping. That would be quite pathetic, wouldn't it?'  
'Good,' Krondesh said. He sounded confident and calm, but there was definitely a flicker of surprise behind the eyes there. 'Glad you've seen sense.'  
'Oh, you can give Kat an IOU for me later,' Dex said airily.  
Krondesh patted his Katana, which was folded up and attached to his belt. 'More than that. I'll give her a new breathing hole or two, as well. I'm a very generous man sometimes.'  
Dex nodded. 'About that. We get something to eat - somewhere a decent distance from her headquarters. So we don't get seen. Then once we're ready, we make out minds up what to do. If we're to pull this off, we'll need a plan.'  
Krondesh shrugged with a rattle of armour. 'I'll leave that to you, army boy. I'll be busy with my steak.'  
'All right, sounds good to me. Do you have all your gear?'  
'One shotgun, one pistol, one knife,' Krondesh said. 'And my pretty face. Easy enough to remember.'  
Dex quickly made sure that he had all his equipment. He was just about to walk to the door when an idea hit him. 'Wait a minute.'  
'What?'  
'Kat will almost certainly have circulated our appearances now, to her people. And Karrean's people will have video footage of us too.'  
'Shit. They'll be after us, and they know what we look like.'  
'Yes.'  
'Damn. So we can't go out?'  
Dex's eyes narrowed. 'Actually yes we can, if we do something first.'  
'Like what?'  
'There's a spray can in the armoury. When I got this suit, I painted it black to better blend in with Omega's shadows. Underneath the paint it has a camo pattern.' Dex scraped one of his fingers along the side of his other gauntlet to demonstrate the point. A little bit of paint came off, revealing olive green underneath.  
'Oh,' Krondesh said. 'That's why you've got brown and green bits around the knees. I just thought you'd stepped in more shit, but no - it's actually peeling paint, isn't it?'  
Dex looked down. Sure enough, over his leg spurs and his knees, there were some missing patches of paint. The original colours of the Predator suit were showing through. He looked back up at the krogan. 'There should be just enough paint left to make you matt black,' he said. 'Unless you're really attached to blue and white?'  
Krondesh considered the question, then dismissed it. 'Not really. And I suppose if we keep our helmets on when we're out and about in public, it might throw the scent off.'  
'They'll spot us eventually,' Dex said. 'Can't do much about our guns, and there are things like gait recognition and so on. But it should buy us a bit of breathing space.'  
'All right.' Krondesh lifted his helmet up. There a hiss and a click as it looked into place and the seals engaged. 'Spraying time, then, I guess.'  
The colour change ended up taking about half an hour. Dex hung up a spare sheet across a corner of the main room. Krondesh had to stand behind it while Dex sprayed him. Even with the sheet, strya splashes of paint spilled out onto the rest of the walls and the whole room stank of its chemical odour.  
Once they were done with Krondesh, it was Dex's turn. Taking the black paint off of his gear took a complicated half-hour with a bottle of paint stripper and a cloth. It made a substantial mess. The cloth stank of the alcohol-based solvent, and it ended up stained a deep, dirty black-grey colour. Dex had to be careful not spray any of the filters or other delicate bits like the visors and eyelenses. Some carefully-applied bits of adhesive plastic had served as masks.  
By the end of it, Dex's suit was back to its original green and beige and brown camo pattern and Krondesh was matt black from head to foot. With their helmets on, they both looked suitably-different from their earlier appearances. It wouldn't fool a detailed observation - their heights and bodyshapes were the same, and they were still wearing the same marks of armour - but it would hopefully throw off a quick or casual inspection.  
There was just enough paint left over for Dex to change the colour of the main bodies of their weapons.  
'Well,' Dex said, 'you look suitably intimidating.'  
Krondesh pounded his two black gauntleted hands together with an enthusiastic double-crack of composite on composite. 'Damn right I do!' The bulbous helmet turned in Dex's direction. 'Whereas you just look out of place.'  
It was true. Dex's camouflage was good, but it was appropriate for a planetary woodland, not a giant space station in distant orbit around a red dwarf. Within Omega it was so mismatched that it actually made him more conspicuous here than a random colour-pattern would have done. This was one of the reasons why modern militaries tended to put more of an emphasis on active cloaking systems than old-style camouflage; there were just too many planets out there with too many wildly-different environments. No one colour pattern could ever hope to cope.  
'With any luck,' Dex said, 'people will be looking at the greens and the beiges - not me!'  
'Have we had any luck so far today?'  
'Well we're both still alive. And you have a new gun.'  
'Yeah, but that was all deliberate stuff. Does it count as luck if you planned it?’  
‘There’s always an element of luck,’ Dex said. ‘I learnt that much in the Legion.’  
There was a muffled rumbling noise from somewhere underneath Krondesh’s breastplate. The krogan looked down, then back up again. ‘Well, army boy, is it lucky to be sharing a room with a hungry krogan?’  
‘No,’ Dex said, ‘I don’t imagine it is. Probably time we did something about that, isn’t it?’  
It was definitely time to take the krogan out for lunch.  
Anywhere else in the galaxy, Dex and Krondesh would have made for quite a spectacle after they left Dex's apartment. However, this was Omega. People with guns were not rare here. In fact, Dex and Krondesh were no more than averagely well-armed. People gave them a wide berth on the streets, but other than that they drew no particular attention.  
Just in case of pursuit, Dex took them both through several of the back passages near where he lived. He had no idea if the paranoia was justified, but that was the problem with security - they'd only know for a fact if someone started shooting at them. Perhaps when things were quiet, that meant Dex's paranoia was working. Or perhaps it just meant that he was being paranoid. After some time, they found a discreet eatery about twenty minutes' walk from where Dex lived.   
‘This is it?' Krondesh asked.  
In front of them was a closed wall-hatch. Dex banged on it with his fist. 'Yes,' he said. They were at the far end of a quiet backstreet. Sounds of people and skycars leaked in from around the junction further down, but here it was unusually peaceful for Omega. No-one else was in this side-alley.  
'It doesn't look like much. Why can't you take me somewhere nice?'  
Dex felt his mandibles flex. The krogan was back into complaining mode, apparently. He sighed. 'If we went to a proper sit-down restaurant,' he said, 'they'd make you check your guns in at the entrance. And take the helmet off. We'd be completely vulnerable.'  
'Oh.' For a mercy, Krondesh actually subsided for a moment. The moment didn't last long. 'It looks shut.'  
'It's not,' Dex said.  
There was sound from behind the hatch. Someone was banging around and emitting what sounded like curses. The hatch rolled up, revealing the salarian proprietor. Part of a kitchen was visible behind him.  
'Great,' Krondesh said. 'A frog. Are you planning on buying fishfood or something, army boy?'  
The salarian's nictitating membranes blinked over his eyes.   
The alien took the pair in. 'If this is a hold-up,' he said, 'I have a gun-'  
'We're here to buy lunch,' Dex said.  
The salarian blinked again. 'Oh. Well in that case, what can I do for you?'  
Dex glanced at the holographic menu, projected on the wall beside the hatch. After the day's expenses, money was an issue. He didn't want to order anything too expensive. 'Set three from the dextro menu and set eight from the levo for the krogan here,' he said.  
'Don't I get a say in this?' Krondesh protested.  
'Sure, if you want to pay,' Dex said.  
The krogan went quiet again.  
The salarian was looking at Dex's face - no, Dex realised, he was staring at his own reflection in Dex's visor. 'Money first,' the salarian said, looking not entirely trusting.  
'Sure.' Dex waved his omnitool over the scanner in the hatch's frame. There was a beep as the credit transfer completed.  
'Okay,' the salarian said, vanishing back into the shop.  
'What, has he just walked off?' Krondesh sounded scandalised.  
'No,' Dex said. 'This place isn't fully automated.'  
There was more banging and crashing and cursing from inside the hatch.  
'What? He's loading a microwave by hand?' Krondesh's incredulity was clear.  
'Yes,' Dex said.  
It took the salarian about ten minutes, but a couple of takeaway bags and their properly-heated contents were delivered to Dex and Krondesh. The krogan's bag was larger than Dex's.  
'Thank you,' Dex said to the proprietor, moments before the salarian slammed the shutter down. It rattled as the bottom slat locked into place against the hatch.  
'Charming,' Krondesh said, leaning forward to inspect the hatch. 'You'd almost think the frog didn't want our business.'  
'He's probably just nervous,' Dex said. 'We are quite obviously armed, after all.'  
'Okay. So - where do we eat?'  
'Follow me,' Dex said. He walked off, the krogan following along behind him.  
He led Krondesh down a couple of narrow alleyways, into a small courtyard. There were some benches along one wall, and a big fan vent in the centre of another wall. The fan vent was dead, the blades behind the grill rusty and bent. The area was at the bottom of a deep shaft. Light was leaking in from up above.  
Krondesh looked around. 'What is this place?'  
Dex pointed at the giant fan in the wall opposite. 'About a century ago, this was one of the district's main air vents. That fan there pumped out fresh oxygen, straight from the central plants.'  
'Doesn't look like it's doing that anymore.'  
Dex shook his head. 'It got shot up badly in a big gangwar, apparently. The fan stopped working. So I hear, Aria's organisation got so pissed off that they crushed the people who did it. But when they repaired the ventilation system, they ended up cutting this fan off. They built that big central one down near the clinic in the residential area instead. Apparently a few really big ones are easier to defend and maintain than lots of little ones.'  
'Not so good if you live a long way from the big one, though,' Krondesh noted.  
Dex nodded. 'Air quality's always been an issue in this district.'  
'Seems like you know a lot about this.'  
'I stumbled on this area four months ago,' Dex said. 'I got interested and so I did some research. It's basically forgotten now. For some reason it's never been closed off, or converted.'  
Krondesh looked upwards through the shaft. 'But what could you do with this space?'  
'You could get a line of tenement-rooms in here,' Dex said.   
'And a small elevator.'  
'Cramped,' the krogan said.  
'Yeah, but people live in worse places in Omega.'  
'True. I know I did.'  
'Plus, for our purposes, there's only the one entrance.'   
Dex pointed back at the entryway through which they'd come. 'So I can just drop a drone to watch that direction, and we should be okay. Time for us to eat.'  
'Above?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex shook his head. 'The opening up there is actually into a skycar tunnel. Look, you can see the shadows as they go over.' A flicker of darkness passed overhead right at that moment. 'No-one will be coming through there on foot. We're safe enough here - for now.'  
They made short work of lunch.  
Whilst they ate, Dex's drone kept watch over them. He set it up further down the alley, just before the main entrance. He ran a feed to his omnitool. As he chewed on the takeaway he kept glancing at the display, just to make sure.  
The time passed and the pair was undisturbed. There was no sign of any opposition presence. Apparently the colour-change ruse had worked.  
Once Krondesh had demolished his meal he seemed more cheerful. 'All that biotics stuff does give you an appetite,' he said, leaning back.  
'Do you feel better now?'  
'Yeah, though I could easily eat another bagfull,' Krondesh said. Then he burped. Dex winced.  
Still, Krondesh did sound happier. Dex had deliberately picked the option with the most protein for him, figuring that the alien would need the energy. The krogan had apparently enjoyed all the meat. He'd seemed less enthusiastic for the vegetable portions of the takeaway, but he'd eaten them anyway.  
Dex scrunched up his bag. With a guilty twitch he dropped it on the floor - there were no bins in the small fan-courtyard. He supposed also that after the day's events, it was preposterous to feel guilty about dropping some litter. But he did feel a momentary twinge.  
'Well,' Dex said, 'now that we've eaten, we need a plan.'  
'You seem to like planning, army boy,' Krondesh said. 'And I like delegating. Go on then. Go and fetch a plan!'  
Dex sighed. 'We can't just walk in the door at Kat's HQ,' he said.   
'If we try, we'll just get gunned down.'  
'Well you'll have to think of something, won't you?' Krondesh said.  
'You're not being very helpful, you know.'  
'I'm krogan; we have a reputation to maintain.' Once more, Krondesh burped.  
Dex frowned, trying to come up with ideas. 'Wait,' he said. 'Maybe there is another option.'  
'Well come on then,' Krondesh said. 'Out with it! We don't have all day.'  
'Funny - a moment ago you were quite happy to pass all the planning over.' Dex wondered if this was another symptom of Krondesh's sublimated insecurities. The one time the krogan had needed to work on his own, during his Rite of Passage, it had been a complete disaster. Although it wasn't his fault, perhaps the experience had left him with a deep-seated distrust of his own judgement? Combine that with the apparent deathwish he'd developed and it was no wonder that the krogan kept trying to pass the buck.  
'Well now I'm making sure you don't lose your thread,' Krondesh said. 'Results management. That's what I'm bringing to this table!'  
'A krogan as a line manager. Wonderful. Just what I need.'  
'Isn't that what every office needs?'  
Dex called up a map on his omnitool. 'Kat's business is here,' he said, pointing to it. 'As I recall, the front areas are the most heavily guarded. She likes to make sure that the clients are closely watched. Addicts can get desperate for their next fix. But ... hmm.'  
'What?'  
'The loading bays, at the back,' Dex said. 'As I recall, personnel were always a lot thinner here. In fact I can't recall ever being posted to the rearmost bay.' He pointed to it on the map. It was the smallest of the three, and the furthest from the main area. 'And if an alarm went off there, it would take longest for the security to respond. Note it's location.' Dex pointed at it on the map. 'There's no direct route to it from the front offices.'  
'What's that room in the middle?' Krondesh asked. 'Between the bay and the front offices?'  
'That room? Oh, that's the VIP club. What did they call it? The Golden Syringe Lobby or something. Basically Kat's richest customers have their own lounge, with private boothes to shoot up in. There won't be any doors to the loading bay in there.'  
'So our plan is that we break in through the loading bay?'  
'No. Or rather, sort of. What we'll do is come down, through the ceiling.'  
'The ceiling?'  
Dex nodded. 'The next level up is a set of hab-blocks.' He called up a schematic on his omnitool. 'And if I'm reading this right, the next level up is commercial warehouses. We can probably break into one of those - and cut our way through the floor!'  
'With what?' Krondesh asked.  
'According to the map, this warehouse belongs to a company who specialise in mining tools,' Dex said.  
'Oh.'  
'Indeed. I suspect there will be something capable of making a decent hole in the floor!'  
'So we drill down and climb through?'  
'Yes. In fact, with any luck, the alarms will all be on the bay doors, not the ceiling. So Kat may not even get alerted to what we're doing until after we're in.'  
'Nice. What about the warehouse? Is that likely to be guarded?'  
'Good question,' Dex said. 'Let me have a look on the extranet and see if there are any clues...' His fingers moved through the haptic field, typing a quick query. He sent it, and looked at the responses. 'Oh, interesting. Looks like they probably won't be.'  
'How so?'  
'Apparently the company is actually technically registered on Noveria - a bit shady, but not quite illegal. And they're currently being sued for unpaid invoices by a volus consortium. Look, it's all over the financial news!'  
'Why do they have a warehouse on Omega, then?'  
'Three guesses, and they all involve hiding assets from the lawyers should they lose the case,' Dex said. 'They're being sued through the Citadel courts, and we have neither a Citadel-recognised government here, nor a recognised legal personality for the station. Makes asset reclamation rather difficult for external creditors.'  
'Oh,' Krondesh said. 'Of course. And realistically the only way the volus group could enforce an adverse judgement would be to send troops to physically-take the goods. But they're volus, so they probably don't have troops. And even if they do, the locals would certainly fight back. It would look a lot like an invasion, Unless they cleared it with Aria first. And she'd demand a fee for giving them access to the station. A big fee. Basically it's too much trouble.’  
'Yes. But if they're in legal trouble, that means most of the company's money will be going on lawyers. They wouldn't be risking valuable equipment in storage on Omega unless they were already desperate. It's unlikely that they have the spare money for decent guards.'  
'So we can probably just walk straight in.'  
'Pretty much.'  
'So ... them hiding their goods here is a bit stupid, really?'  
'Yeah, but if they've pissed of the volus, they were obviously never the most accurate rifle on the rack to begin with.'  
'So in fact if we make a nice neat hole in the wall, we'll actually be doing them a favour. Because the inevitable Omegan burglars would certainly be messier, and that would damage more of the stock, right? But once we've been through their wall, there'll be a nice hole for the burglars to use. So they'll actually damage less of their stock - since they'll certainly get burgled anyway at some point!'  
Dex was silent for a moment. Then, after some thought, he said, 'Krondesh, the Noverian traders should've hired you as their defence lawyer. You have a glib tongue. And that argument actually almost made sense.'  
'Plus who's going to argue with a big angry krogan?' Krondesh sounded smug. 'Really, they should be pleased. We'll be doing them a massive favour.' He paused, then he asked, 'So we're going to pick a lock or something?'  
'No.'  
'No?'  
'You are going to drop a warp field on the back wall of the warehouse. Once it's been suitably-weakened, we just kick ourselves a little hole and climb through. I don't think we can do that on the inter-level floors - they're too thick - but it should work for the warehouse.'  
'So I'm doing all the work, am I?'  
'Well, you made me make all the decisions, so I think its only fair.'  
To Dex's surprise, the krogan laughed. 'All right, army boy. You win.'  
Dex blinked. 'Okay. Let's get going, then...'  
Half an hour later, they were outside the warehouse. Dex had picked an indirect route, keeping to the back alleys as much as possible. There was always a drone circling in the vicinity, feeding intelligence back to his omnitool. He saw no signs of pursuit. It appeared that they'd slipped Kat's notice, for now at least.  
The warehouse was an ugly grey prefabricated cube. It was sat inside a big industrial chamber, one of several dozen arranged in a neurotically-regular grid. It cast stark shadows in the glare of the white overhead lights in the chamber.  
'This is it?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex checked his map. They were stood at the back of the warehouse. In front of them was a greyish wall, marked by a few pipes and cables.   
'Yes,' he said.  
'Should I...?' Krondesh gestured at the wall.  
Dex nodded. 'Just there, in the middle. The blank bit.'  
'Step back,' the krogan said.  
Dex moved back.  
Krondesh performed a mnemomnic gesture. A bluish biotic corona flooded over him. Then energy spilled out across the wall, rippling and hissing. Flakes of wall material started cracking off and falling to the ground as the biotic field chewed away at it.  
'Do you want me to shockwave it?' Krondesh asked.  
'No. An explosion might damage the gear inside. And we need those digging tools in working order.' Plus it might attract attention. Biotic explosions were fairly unusual, but Dex knew that many modern security VI-systems monitored for them.  
The warp field was spitting and dying. As the field faded out, the damage to the wall was revealed. Its surface was pitted and charred. It looked tired. The paint was all gone. At the bottom of the wall a heap of ash had formed, material chewed up and spat out by the warp field.  
'Okay,' Dex said. 'That looks weaker. Give it a kick.'  
'With pleasure!' Krondesh kicked the wall.  
With a shudder, the weakened section collapsed. A ragged circular hole was left behind.  
'In we go,' Dex said.  
There was a quiet beep and a click; Krondesh was holding his katana. The gun had unfolded itself into his hands. Dex held up a hand to stall the krogan. He then tossed one of his drones through. Standing with his back to the wall, opposite the hole, he looked at the display on his omnitool.  
The drone's small camera sent back a grainy video. It was dark inside the warehouse; low light conditions led to a poor signal-to-noise ratio in the images. Still, Dex could make out the bulky shapes of various machines, sat silent under tarpaulins. He switched to the thermal imager, looking for the bright glow of warm bodies. The infrared technique worked best for mammals, of course, but even a reptile like a krogan or a drell would have some heat signature from their weapons and their gear. Dex saw no evidence of any activity inside the warehouse.  
Krondesh's head was pointed at him. With the helmet on, Dex had no idea of the krogan's expression, but his posture suggested curiosity.  
Dex pointed at Krondesh, then the hole. The krogan nodded and ducked into the warehouse. Dex waited.He heard no alarm and no shots ringing out. The silence was undisturbed. So, after a moment, he followed the krogan in.  
The warehouse was a still and cool space. Dex could just see the dim shapes of the banks of lights that ran along the ceiling, but they were all off. All around him loomed orderly rows of machinery, draped in sheets and dust covers.  
The massive shape of a krogan appeared in front of Dex. 'No-one's here,' Krondesh reported.  
Dex breathed a sigh of relief. 'Good. Let's have a look around and see what we can find.'  
A few minutes' examination revealed their best prospect. It was an old, but reasonably well-maintained, mining laser. It was the sort of thing that might be used on an asteroid or an airless moon. The beam was optimised to burn through refractory materials. The pair managed to get the big unit set up on its tripod, and aimed at roughly the right patch of floor. The laser itself was relatively small, but it had a substantial cooling unit bolted to its side. The whole assemblage was larger than Dex, a blocky mass of cables, modules and nuts and bolts. Dex was quite glad of the krogan's presence. There was no way he could have set the device up on his own.  
Even with both of them, it took several long minutes of grunting and swearing before the apparatus was ready for use.  
'We'll have to cut fairly slowly,' Dex said. 'A powerful beam like this will set up a lot of heating in the material. We don't want the floor catching fire.'  
'No,' Krondesh agreed. 'That would be bad. Now, where do we plug this thing in?' He hefted the power cable. It was a fat braided cord, with a bulky high-capacity plug hanging from one end.  
'I think I saw a socket over there,' Dex said, pointing to their left.  
The krogan ambled off, dragging the cable after him.  
A few moments later, there was a beep. LEDs blinked into life across the body of the laser and Dex became aware of a hum from the cooling unit. The display on the haptic interface declared that the machine's specialis VI was booting up. The machine was coming to life.  
Krondesh returned. 'Do we have a hole yet?'  
'Steady on, it's not even powered up!'  
'Well hurry up, army boy. We don't have all day.'  
The VI finally announced that it was ready.  
'Stand back,' Dex told Krondesh.  
By a minor miracle, the krogan actually listened. He stepped back.  
Dex loaded a set of instructions into the VI, then set it to start after a ten second delay. That gave him long enough to withdraw to what should be a safe distance.  
The laser unit beeped. Then it beeped again. Then it beeped with a longer, sharper tone. A motor whirred inside the assembly and the snub-nosed aperture swung down.  
Actinic light. Dex was dazzled. A deafening roar filled the air. He blinked, trying to clear his eyes. The mining laser had already cut a short burnt, melted trail in the floor. The beam moved forward, chewing at the floor material. A shimmering heathaze rose over it.  
The cutting was noisy. The beam crackled and chattered as it moved over the floor. Bits of molten metal spurted up, landing elsewhere with hisses of angry heat. Behind the beam, the edges of the cut glowed a hot cherry-red. The beam began to curve round.  
Next to Dex's shoulder, the cooling unit groaned and chugged. Puffs of steam spurted from its vents. Something inside the unit rattled noisily.  
Under his feet, Dex could feel the floor shifting. The circular section the beam was cutting was no longer supported properly. Only a narrow arc still joined it to the rest of the floor. The incipient cut-out was beginning to sag.  
The air in the warehouse was getting hazy. Dex suspected it was a mixture of dust thrown up by the cuttings, vapour from the cooling unit and smoke from the burned edges of the cut. It made him very glad of the filters in his helmet. Even past them, he could catch a scent of burnt metal and an ammonia-like chemical whiff - the cooling unit, presumably.  
Then silence fell. The laser blinked off. Phosphene after-images danced in front of Dex's eyes. It was dark again in the warehouse.  
'Hey,' Krondesh said. 'The damnable thing's stuck!'  
The edges of the cut were still glowing a sullen red, the heathaze still dancing over them. And those were just the bits hot enough to see. A scan with Dex's omnitool revealed that the areas around the cut were hot too - too hot to safely touch. Unlike their earlier excursion into the vacuum outside Omega, convection and conduction were very much in evidence in the warehouse.  
Inside the boundary of the cut, the circular plug of floor had sunk by about twenty centimetres. It had tilted, however - the closest end had sunk further than the opposite side. That tilt had jammed it in place.  
'Oh crap,' Dex said. 'There must be an off-centre load - a bit of pipe or something, on the bottom closest to me. So it's gone off centre.'  
'Expansion in the heat?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex blinked. A physics question from the krogan? 'Probably that as well,' he said, 'but the outside of the cut has been heated too, so that will have expanded as well. So that won't be the critical thing.'  
'Oh,' Krondesh said. 'I remember we used to get that problem all the time on Tuchanka. My krantt and I went outside the Shroud track, before we were attacked.' The krogan shook his head. 'We stupidly left our guns outside during the midday heat. Turns out the casing expanded enough that it fractured around the mountings for the rail extensions. So of course the guns didn't fire right when we needed them!'  
Dex's mandibles moved. 'Modern guns work over a wide range of temperatures and air pressures,' he noted.  
'Yeah but these were cheap ones,' Krondesh said. 'Do you think penniless adolescent krogan are totting HWSGs, army boy?'  
'No, I suppose not.'  
'And anyway, outside the shadow-tracks, it gets fucking hot on Tuchanka. The average is seventy-two degrees celsius - that means half the time it's hotter!'  
Dex stared at the glowing ring in the floor-material in front of them. 'How high does it go?' he asked.  
'On the day we left the guns outside, it hit ninety-one,' Krondesh said. 'That's partly why we had to leave them out, actually. Less than an hour after sunrise and temperatures were already at the life-threatening level, even for us. When we realised how bad it was going to get, we had to seek refuge, basically there and then. We didn't think we had time to pack up the camp properly. We spent the day hiding at the bottom of a local cave system - the surface gets hot, but it stays cooler underground. Admittedly that was an exceptionally bad day, even by Tuchankan standards, but still, it gives you the idea.'  
Dex shuddered. While it was true enough that turians didn't like the cold, temperatures above ninety degrees didn't bear thinking about. 'So ... your attackers. How were they able to function in that heat?'  
'They hit us the day after,' Krondesh said. 'Temperatures were back down to the seventies. Unpleasant, but just about manageable. Anyway, they had armour and we didn't.' Krondesh rapped on his breastplate. 'There's a lot to be said for refrigerated suits.'  
‘They must have spotted the guns when they were unattended,' Dex guessed. 'Probably figured there were easy pickings nearby. And lay in wait for you to come out.'  
Krondesh nodded. 'Sounds about right.' More of the basic unfairness of war, Dex supposed. Your opponents are best attacked when they're at their weakest, aren't expecting you and have inferior equipment. Krondesh was evidently lucky to have survived.  
Dex looked back at th jammed plug of floor. 'What are we going to do about this?' he said. 'It's too hot too touch. And it'll take ages to cool down. And if we wait too long, those hot edges might just weld themselves to the sides of the hole.'  
It occurred to Dex that this exercise might not have gained them anything. He felt a moment of frustration. Damn it, why was nothing ever simple?  
'Oh, that's easy enough,' the krogan said. 'We don't have to touch it.'  
The shadows changed in the warehouse as Krondesh was surrounded by a biotic corona. He made a gesture.  
The shockwave roared.  
Dex staggered back as the floor shook under him. With a loud scrape, the plug of floor material was knocked free. It dropped down through the hole. A moment later, there was a loud crash from below. It was followed by the sound of chunks of debris, skittering around the impact site.  
Dex winced. 'Well, nicely done, but please warn me next time.'  
The krogan's corona vanished. 'Okay. Now, how do we get down?'  
That was another good point. The obstruction was gone, but the edges of the hole were still too hot to touch. If they could find a rope ... Dex looked around, but he didn't see anything obviously rope-like in the warehouse. And anyway, hanging a rope over the red-hot edge would probably just result in it catching fire.  
'No. Before we do anything, let's recce it first.' Dex reached to his omnitool and set about readying a new drone. A quick bit of speed-programming and it was ready to be deployed through the hole.  
With a quiet whir from its miniature eezo motors, the drone dropped through the hole.  
Dex peered at the holographic image the drone was feeding back. 'I can't see any movement,' he reported. 'There are some parked vehicles in the bay - two trucks and a skycar. The big, back door is closed and - oh, what's this?'  
'What?' Krondesh asked. 'What have you seen?'  
'That's interesting. There's another door, on the side wall.' Dex pointed to it on the display. 'And that's not on any of the plans of Kat's HQ.'  
'Where does it go?' Krondesh asked.  
'I have no idea. It's positioned next to the back area of the Golden Syringe lounge, though. Wonder why that would need quick access to the vehicle bay?'  
'Is anyone active down there?'  
Dex shook his head. 'I can't see any movement and there are no active heat signatures. It doesn't seem like our break-in drew any attention. Seems all the alarms are on the back door after all. What I will do is park the drone near this extra door, though. Just to be sure.'  
'Good idea,' Krondesh said. 'But we're back to the earlier question - how do we get down?'  
Dex sent the drone its new instructions, then turned back to the problem of the still-hot edges. The mining laser was still sat next to them, raised up on its tripod, the beam pointed down at the hole in the floor. A coating of frost was developing around the edges of the cooling vanes -  
Oh.  
'I just had an idea,' Dex said. 'Krondesh, could you go and scout the warehouse? See if you can find any sort of rope, or any kind of mass effect lifting pallet? If you do, bring them back here.'  
'All right. And what will you be doing?'  
'We're not going to need the mining laser again,' Dex said. 'And I doubt we really want the volus to get their hands on it either. So I'm going to take it apart.'  
'What good does that do?'  
'If I can get at the coolant-tank, we can coat the hole in cooling fluid,' Dex said. 'As the heat boils the fluid off, it also takes heat away. I keep pouring coolant over it until the temperature is down to safe level. Then we run some ropes over and lower ourselves down. We can tie the rope off to one of those really big and heavy crates - that should hold it.' Dex waved a hand at one of the nearby stacks of crates. Each crate was bigger than he was. There was no risk of them slipping loose.  
'Okay,' Krondesh said. 'Sounds like a plan, army boy.' The krogan turned to walk off.  
A thought suddenly occurred to Dex. 'Krondesh.'  
'What?'  
'You haven't called me "bird" for a while.'  
The krogan paused, appearing to consider this. 'No,' he said. 'I don't suppose I have. Just don't really feel like it anymore.' And with that, the alien reptile ambled off.  
Dex stared at his retreating back. Interesting. Still, he had to get on with addressing the matter at hand. He shook his head and returned his attention to the mining laser.  
Unmounting the cooling unit required specialist tools. Luckily, they were stood inside a tools warehouse, so there were plenty to be scavenged. A few minutes' work and Dex had the cooling unit detached. It was then a slightly more awkward matter to get it opened up, but he managed the task soon enough. Finally he had the coolant bottle in his hands. The fluid could be released through a nozzle at the top. I wasn't designed for manual operation, but Dex was able to improvise a handle by wedging a screwdriver into the connection-slot.  
Then he turned the nozzle toward the hot hole in front of him.  
A twist of the screwdriver and the bottle jerked in his hands. With a loud hiss, a mist of coolant sprayed over the glowing edges. Much sizzling and spitting ensued as coolant boiled off from the hot surface. As it did, the cherry red glow faded into darkness.  
Dex kept at it until his omnitool's sensors confirmed that temperatures had fallen to a safe level. Just as he was finishing up, Krondesh returned with a bundle of rope that he'd found.  
'That looks better,' the krogan observed.  
Dex put the emptied cylinder down on the floor. It settled down with a hollow clang. 'I think we can go now,' he said.  
With the krogan's aid, he set about tying the rope to one of the heaviest, bulkiest crates. There were some carry-handles along its outer face; Dex knotted the rope around these. After testing the knots, he was fairly sure they were okay to go.  
'I'll go first,' Krondesh said, volunteering himself. 'If we get any surprises down there, I can warp them into a bloody mess, then punch them into a bloodier one.'  
The krogan's enthusiasm was admirable. Dex wasn't so sure about his good sense. Nonetheless he nodded his permission.  
Krondesh grabbed the rope, then abseiled his way down the hole. The rope jerked tight and Dex saw the alien's hump vanish through the hole in the floor. The rope shook. A moment later Dex heard a thump from below.  
'I'm down,' Krondesh's voice reported into Dex's earphones. 'No-one's here.'  
'Okay. If you could cover the main door, I'll be straight down.'  
'Understood.' The krogan signed off with a click.  
Dex checked on his Phaeston, folded up on his back. He looked at the rope and the hole. He had no fear of heights, but once more he found himself missing his old rocket boots. He shook his head. No help for that now.  
He grabbed the rope, gave it a tug to be sure that it was still held tight, and he dropped over the edge.  
A moment later, Dex landed in the vehicle bay. The circle of cut floor lay there some distance away, where it had landed. Bits of debris were scattered around, chunks of broken composite and droplets of melted metal. The circle had landed next to one of the vans. Dex smirked as he imagined how Kat would react to that.  
Then it hit him. They were here. They'd done it. They were inside Kat's HQ. The easy bit was over. Once they breached the main complex, detection was a certainty. They would meet opposition and they would have to fight. This was going to be difficult, dangerous and bloody. But there was no other way around it. They needed the evidence, the proof of Kat’s misdeeds.  
He looked toward the main door. Krondesh was beside it, in an alert stance, with his Katana out and ready. Anyone coming through there would get a krogan-shaped surprise.  
Dex eyed the main door. Krondesh was focused on it, Katana up and ready. 'So we're going through there?' the krogan asked.  
Dex felt uneasy. The door was shut, and opaque to the sensors in his omnitool. They had no idea what was on the other side of it. The ceiling-plug had made a lot of noise when it had fallen. Was it really plausible that no-one had noticed? Anything could lie beyond, including a full ambush team.  
And then there was the mystery on the opposite wall.  
'I think,' he said, 'we need to check out this second door first. Because it shouldn't be here.'  
Before he could change his mind, he turned sharply on his heel and marched over. The little drone was still guarding the mystery door, although the drone's motors were fast exhausting themselves. A few more seconds and then its pre-programmed self-destruct would activate. The drones were set up to explode rather than fall to the ground where enemy forces could find and capture them. An understandable safety precaution, but also an awkward one sometimes.  
Dex checked his various pouches. He had one more prefabricated drone left. If he wanted to use more, he'd have to put his omnitool into synthesis mode, and feed it a supply of the relevant raw materials. Assuming he could even find any materials, the manufacture would take a while. Luckily he had all the fabrication templates pre-loaded into the omnitool's memory, courtesy of some cracked corporate licenses that he'd bought on one of Omega's markets.  
He stood to one side of the door, clutching his Phaeston. Carefully, he gave the door a push with one foot. It was unlocked. The door swung inwards with a creak.  
Dex ordered his drone through.  
It sent back a grainy image of a room filled with odd shapes -  
The image cut out. Dex heard the little explosion as the drone blew up. Damn. So no more intelligence. He swore under his breath. Well, he hadn't seen any movement in the brief feed, so it was probably okay.  
He clicked the safety off on his rifle, then he ducked down around the door -  
'Stop moving! Or I shoot! I mean it, damn you!'  
What? Instinct took over. Dex dived into a roll, toward the nearest solid shape. He hit the floor with a bone-jarring crunch. An instant later and he was crouched behind some kind of - pod?  
He was breathing fast. His heart was thudding. His mandibles were clenched tightly against his face, an instinctive turian defensive reaction. He was crouched behind a bulbous shape made out of a hard, chitinous material. Dex had no idea what it was, except that the object was ovoid in shape, about half a metre high and two long. It was lying on its side on the floor. It had a sort of glassy window in the top half. The whole thing was a sort of greyish-beige in colour. And something about it was weirdly familiar.  
Dex shook his head, putting the thought to one side. Tactical considerations came first. He gripped his Phaeston tighter.  
Dex dug out his other drone and keyed it on. It was wasteful, but he needed the intelligence before risking leaving cover.  
There was a crackle in his earphones. 'Krondesh here,' he heard the krogan say. 'I heard someone yelling. Are you okay?'  
'We've got company,' Dex said. 'Numbers, threat level and armament unknown. If you could get to the side of the door, though, that'd be good. I'm going to drop my drone and try and get a proper sitrep.'  
'Okay. Don't drop your drone too hard, though - sounds painful!' The krogan signed off with one of his usual parting shots.  
Dex keyed the drone into life and tossed it over the pod.  
There was a crack and a puff of paint spurted off the wall above him and to his left. A wild shot. Amateurs. Dex shook his head in irritation.  
The drone feed was coming in. The room was full of pods like this one. Most of them were stacked neatly against the walls. What exactly were they? And what was this?  
In the middle of the floor, in a vacant space, a pod lay askance.   
The top section was partly-open, like a clamshell. And behind it was -  
'Finch?' Dex boggled. 'What in Palaven's cold seas are you doing here?'  
There was a pause, then: 'Dex? Is this that you?'  
'Yes,' he said.  
'Whatever Kat paid you, I can pay you more!' The Finch's voice sounded panicky. She was a woman on the edge. And the drone's footage made clear that she was holding a Carnifex pistol. And a Carnifex that seemed to have had some very non-standard mods grafted to it, although the footage wasn't quite clear enough for Dex to be sure.  
'Pay us? What?'  
'Yes, whatever she's paying you. To kill me!'  
Dex's mandibles flexed. This was unexpected. He had to choke back a burst of hysterical laughter. 'Uh, actually, she was trying to kill us last time I checked.'  
'Hey,' a voice said from around the door, 'is some kind of reunion going on in there?'  
'What?' Dex heard the Finch say. 'Oh God no, not the krogan too!'  
'Well it's certainly "a" krogan,' Krondesh's voice objected. 'I'm not quite sure that I'm "the" krogan yet. We're getting rarer as times goes on, but we're that rare! Yet, anyway.'  
Grammatical nitpicking. From a krogan. In the middle of what could easily turn into a firefight. Dex spared a moment to wonder how his life had turned into such a confused mess.  
'Finch,' Dex said, 'I genuinely have no idea why you're here. And we certainly weren't expecting you.'  
'Then why are you here?' she said. 'I know what this is. Kat set this up, didn't she? This is her backup plan in case the pod didn't work. She-'  
'Wait, pod? You mean the half-open one?' A horrible suspicion began to form in Dex's mind.  
He could hear the thrumming of his drone's motors, and the omnipresent hiss of Omega's air vents.  
'Yes! The one Kat's thugs put me in after they kidnapped me!'  
'There are people in these pods?' Dex looked around the room. There were rather a lot of the pods, he noted. Now that he was looking carefully, he could see blurry shapes behind the translucent windows. The shapes weren't entirely clear, but they could be those of people.  
None of them were moving.  
Dex took a breath, very aware of the sound of it inside his helmet. The rubber and metal smell of the suit's inside was strong. Dex felt a little sick. He realised he was feeling a touch of genuine fear.  
'Something,' he heard himself say, 'is very fucking wrong here.'  
'Hang on,' the krogan said from behind the door, with a sceptical tone in his voice. 'If you got shoved in a pod, how did you get out?'  
'I'm not a poddy kind of girl,' the Finch said, acerbically. 'Anyway I'm not sure I should tell you, given that you're in league with that bitch.'  
'Oh for the spirits' sake!' Dex was feeling exasperated. 'I'm getting sick of this! Finch, I'm going to stand up. Please don't shoot me. I won't be putting my gun down, because you shot first and I'm not an idiot. But I'm not going to insist on you putting yours down, either. Maybe if we can see each other, perhaps we can talk.'  
'You're getting a good offer, mammal,' the krogan added from beyond the door. 'Normally he deals with people who shoot first by ventilating them. I'd think about taking his offer.'  
Carefully, slowly, Dex stood up.  
After a moment, the Finch stood up. She was behind the fallen pod that lay about three metres from the door. As he looked more closely, Dex saw that there was a hole in the pod's window, where something had apparently burnt its way through.  
The Finch was dressed in her usual style, except that her T-shirt was smeared with soot and there was a burn-hole on one side. Underneath it Dex could see the gleam of hastily-applied medigel.  
'You set off an incendiary inside the pod,' he said.  
The Finch looked down, then up again. She held the Carnifex in one unsteady hand, not quite aimed at him. 'Yes,' she said. 'My omnitool. It can make incineration bursts.'  
'Non-standard for a civilian model,' Dex noted.  
'It was a Logic Arrest,' she said. 'Before I started hacking it, I mean.'  
'You have a tech background?' Dex was surprised.  
She snorted. 'You could say that. I've been had some past lives before I wound up here. But that's not relevant to the matter at hand.'  
Past lives? And now working as a shady employment broker on Omega? And a broker who apparently knew how to modify civilian tools for military-grade functionalities? This was getting weirder by the minute.  
'You burnt your way out of the pod,' Dex said.  
'No. I made a hole big enough to reach out. Then I tripped the catch and the lid came up.'  
Dex risked a look behind him, at the other pods. 'The shapes...' he said.  
'People,' she said. She swallowed. Her eyes were wild. The whites seemed very prominent, and they gleamed with excess water. She swallowed again. 'Just before they - they loaded me in there. I saw two other people get put in. Both birds - turians, I mean. They were - I think they were from that club. What's it called? The Bronze Canula?'  
'Golden Syringe,' Dex said.  
'They were stoned - OD'ing, maybe. They didn't resist much. But After the lids come down, there's a stasis field in there.'  
That would explain the lack of movement in the pods, Dex noted, feeling oddly clinical. 'Then why aren't you in stasis?'  
'The circuits are inside the pod, with you,' the Finch said. 'I recognised them - I've handled Collector tech before, once or twice. Before the field engaged, I managed to damage them.' She looked down and flexed her fingers. Dex noted that the nails were scratched and her fingers were dirty. She said, 'They gave me a nasty electric shock, but the field didn't activate. So I could still move.'  
'Wait, you said Collector tech - oh shit.' Dex could feel the dominos falling in his head. A new and horrible picture was forming. 'Krondesh? You'd better get in here. I think I know what's going on now.'  
The krogan loomed around the door.  
The Finch blinked. 'What -? Wow, he's better-dressed than the last time I saw him.'  
'Don't ask,' Dex said. 'It's related to one of Kat's attempts to kill us. Luckily I took him shopping first.'  
'So,' Krondesh rumbled, 'what the fuck is this?' He waved a massive hand at the room of pods.  
'Kat is more evil then we thought,' Dex said. 'And I know why she wants Aria dead now.'  
'Why?' Krondesh asked.  
'That Collector footage she showed us? At a guess, Karrean gave it to her. He's her business representative - to the Collectors!'  
'What?'  
'Yeah, she and he have been in it together all along. She's started making money by selling Golden Syringe club debtors to the Collectors. To make it deniable Karrean's people do the actual black-bag stuff. If anyone ever asks, they're just contractors and she had no idea where the bodies were going. In turn Karrean takes a cut.'  
'But T'Loak doesn't allow the Collectors on the station - oh.'  
'Yes. So Kat needs T'Loak out of the way, because she's bad for business. Hence the assassination attempt. And that's where we both blundered into this mess, as we figured earlier.'  
'Shit.'  
'Yeah. It also means she's going to keep trying to kill us - because we now know something that could really, really hurt her. If T'Loak found out about this...'  
'Wow,' Krondesh said. 'Kat would be asari toast!'  
'Wait,' the Finch said, 'I think I'm missing something.'  
Dex tried to fix her with his best platoon sergeant's glare, then he remembered that she couldn't see his face. 'Okay,' he said. 'Have you decided not to shoot us?'  
The Finch looked at her Carnifex. 'Provisionally,' she said, sounding wary.  
'All right. Then let me fill you in on our interesting day...' Dex gave the Finch a quick executive summary on what had happened to him and Krondesh.  
As he spoke, the Finch's pistol drooped. Finally, with a resigned shrug, she clicked it into folding itself up and she reattached it to her belt. 'Well,' she said, 'I guess you're not planning to kill me, then.'  
'No,' Dex said.  
She sighed. 'Well, I think I understand why I got black-bagged too.'  
'Go on?' Dex asked.  
'I'm a link to both of you, and it's possible you might have talked to me,' she said. 'I might not know much by myself, but then I might also be biding my time. Or I might randomly make the relevant connection later. Either way, Kat can't risk having me wandering around.'  
'So she got you shoved in one of these pods,' Krondesh said.  
'I was at the B&A,' Kat said, 'holding one of my usual forums. When a load of batarians came in. With guns. They grabbed me and dragged me off.'  
'Describe them,' Dex said.  
The Finch shrugged. 'They were ugly.'  
'Probably true,' Dex agreed, 'but not very helpful. What else do you remember?'  
'Uh,' and the Finch screwed up her eyes, 'they were Blue Suns. Oh, and several of them had those weird harpoon gun things!'  
Dex glanced in Krondesh's direction, then back again. 'Sounds familiar,' he said. The description fitted both with what they'd seen in the video at Kat's office and with what they'd seen at the ambush. 'Almost certainly Karrean's mercs, then.'  
The krogan nodded. 'She and he are an item. Fuck.'  
'At a guess,' Dex said, 'they're going to try another hit on Aria at some point. They use the chaos to install Karrean in her place - he's clearly a power-hungry bastard - with Kat as his right-hand asari. Then they can trade as much as they like with the Collectors.'  
'An entire station, filled with potential victims, and nowhere for anyone to run to,' Krondesh noted. 'It's not often that things are worse than I thought.'  
The Finch was watching them with narrowed eyes. 'So - what are you intending to do?' she asked. 'Given that Kat's trying to kill you, why are you here?'  
'We need hard evidence,' Dex said. 'Unimpeachable evidence.'  
'There are no courts,' the Finch said.  
'We're not taking this to court,' Dex said. 'We're taking this to T'Loak. Collectors, structural damage to the hull and what looks like a coup plot - this is above our pay-grade. And this sort of info is hot as fuck. We don't want to be carrying it any further than we have to.'  
The Finch's face was intent. 'You're here to raid Kat's offices,' she said.  
'Yes,' Dex agreed.  
'Take me with you,' she said.  
'Why?' Krondesh asked.  
'I have tech skills,' she said. 'I can extract the data for you, if she's done anything clever with it. And I do know my way around a gun. I can help. I won't be a burden. You have a better chance with three than with one.'  
Inside his helmet, Dex frowned. He realised that the Finch did have a point. Still he felt sceptical. 'Will you be all right as you are?' he asked. 'I mean, you've only got a pistol, and you're not really dressed for a firefight.'  
The Finch reached down to her omintool and tapped something out. Orange holographic glows abruptly wrapped themselves around parts of her   
body. She smiled at Dex, past the glowing lights. He got an unpleasantly clear view of her weird, stubby, white human teeth and that fat reddish glistening tongue, and he had to repress an instinctive shudder.  
She said, 'Tech armour. A useful thing to know about. It's not as good by itself, but it's better than nothing.'  
Dex nodded slowly. She raised a good point. Tech armour was effective; the conventional turian forces made substantial use of it.  
'Okay,' he said. 'But one more thing - if we're getting shot at, I need to know that you're reliable.'  
She shrugged. 'I'm not stupid. I can do what I'm told. Look, look at it this way - I've spent four years on Omega, going back and forth to shitholes like the B&A. If I didn't have a clue how to handle myself, I'd already be decorating a coffin.'  
‘All right,’ Dex said.   
Krondesh twitched, like he was surprised, but the krogan didn’t say anything.  
‘Really?’ the Finch said surprise rippling across her face.  
‘One other thing,’ Dex said. ‘You can set up tech armour and you can set fire to stuff. What else do you know how to do?’  
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m pretty good at finding my way into complicated electronic systems. And I’ve rigged my omnitool to set up electrical overloads - nothing like a good magnetic induction pulse to fry peoples’ shields and circuits!’  
Dex nodded. ‘The hacking - is that more of a do-it-in-a-fight or a sit-down-in-quiet-room skill?’  
‘The latter,’ she admitted. ‘The other stuff I can do whenever, though.’  
‘And what are you best at?’  
The Finch scowled under his examination, but she reluctantly accepted it. ‘I’m best at the incendiaries,’ she said. ‘Followed I suppose by the tech armour. I really worked at the custom code for the mass fields. Body shape, personal kinematics, adaptive round deflection ... The overloads are fun, but that’s more of a one-trick pony.’  
Dex blinked. ‘A pony? Is that human slang for an explosion?’  
The Finch snorted, then laughed. ‘No. It’s an Earth animal - never mind.’  
So between them they had some biotics via Krondesh and a lot of tech skills through himself and the Finch. Okay. Dex figured that she was right - three people did stand a better chance than two. But there was one last question.  
‘What do you get out of this? If we take you along - what’s your reason to be in this fight?’  
The Finch shuddered. ‘Kat had me abducted,’ she said. ‘And she was going to sell me to the Collectors. Fuck, no! No, no, no!’ Her eyes were large and haunted and she was breathing a little fast. Her free hand was a balled fist at her side. ‘I’m not too happy about that. She owes me.’  
Dex supposed this was something they could work with. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Welcome aboard.’  
‘One question from me,’ Krondesh interjected.  
The Finch eyed the krogan dubiously. ‘Okay.’  
‘If you broke out of the pod - why are you still here?’  
She shrugged. ‘I broke out about ten minutes ago. I was about to get out of here when there was a burning smell from in the main bay and part of the ceiling fell in. I bolted back behind the pod - I thought it was Kat.’  
‘Uh, that was us,’ Dex said. ‘Sorry.’  
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Okay.’  
‘Mining laser,’ Krondesh explained. ‘We mined through the ceiling.’  
The Finch nodded slowly. ‘Right. Whatever works, I guess.’  
‘Well,’ Dex said, ‘we’d better move. I don’t believe no-one noticed part of the roof come down. We need to get to Kat’s office, as soon as possible. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can be out of here.’  
The Finch nodded, visibly composing herself. ‘I’m ready whenever you need,’ she said


	11. The Heist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pods are unloaded. Kat’s sanctum is breached. A large number of mercenaries are disposed of. The Finch makes herself useful. An escape is subsequently attempted.
> 
> And Krondesh adopts the habit of referring to the Finch as ‘Oi you, mammal!’

On the threshold of the back room, the Finch paused. 'Should we ... do something about the pods?' he asked.  
Dex hesitated. He wasn't sure that they had time. Could they investigate the pods, and get to Kat's office before serious resistance arrived? Or on the other hand, what would happen to the pod-victims if they were left behind? Nothing good, Dex suspected. The rumours about the Collectors all agreed that their victims were never seen again.  
Krondesh merely shrugged. 'Not much we can do,' he said. 'Could we even get an undamaged pod open?'  
'Yes,' the Finch said. 'There's a catch on the outside. If we leave them...' She shuddered.  
'You said they were all doped and maybe OD'ed,' Krondesh said. 'If we get them out of the pods, they might just die anyway. Sorry. We're going to have to do some fighting here. That has to come first.'  
Dex paused. If they delayed, they increased their own personal risk. If they went ahead, then they abandoned Kat's victims to their fate. He wondered what they were fighting for here. Purely for themselves, or to stop something bad?  
A merc, he thought, would go straight to Kat's office.  
A snap decision was made. 'We open the pods,' he said.  
'What? Have you gone mad, army boy?' The krogan was not impressed.  
'We open the pods,' Dex repeated.  
'But we can't carry all of them,' Krondesh said. 'There's nowhere we can take them. We'll just have to leave them here. Kat will just re-pod them once we leave. And that's assuming the OD cases don't just die once they're out. This is pointless, army boy.'  
'Wait,' the Finch said. 'I have an idea. See that truck just there?' She pointed at one of the vehicles sat in the bay. 'The back compartment is big enough to take all of them. I counted fourteen pods in the room. That make of truck has a programmable VI - I can set it up to auto-navigate to one of the hospitals. Better yet, if the vehicle goes off unexpectedly, that might distract Kat's guards, buy us some extra time to get to her office. Also the other victims have at least a chance to survive this way.' She shuddered, looking a little sick. 'They don't if Kat sells them.'  
Krondesh made an irritated noise. 'This is a bad idea,' he said.  
'The sooner we start,' Dex said, 'the sooner it's done. Enough argument - let's move.'  
The krogan sighed. 'This is a mistake, but if you're going to insist on it...'  
The next few minutes were busy. The Finch prepped the truck and its VI. Dex and Krondesh set to unloading the pods. They had some trouble at first, until Dex remembered how the Finch had described her own self-rescue. There was indeed a catch on the outside, near the edge of the pod's door. Once it was tripped, the pods automatically clamshelled open. When the pod opened, the internal stasis fields automatically broke.  
The occupants were still alive, but unconscious. Several of them looked very ill. Dex didn't rate their chances of surviving the journey to the hospital. Still, he felt he had to make the attempt. If he didn't then it would give the lie to his own beliefs.  
There was one advantage to the time it took to load the truck: it gave Dex's omnitool enough time to synthesize four new drones. There was just enough metallic debris lying around in the vehicle bay to supply the needed raw materials. As each drone finished its fabrication cycle, Dex quickly pocketed it and opened a new pouch to await the subsequent one.  
They got the truck loaded quickly and efficiently. There was just enough space across the floor and the seats for the collection of semi-conscious junkies. The Finch had set the VI on a ten-minute delay. Privately Dex suspected that might doom a few of the sicker cases, but the three had their own needs to see to as well.  
He felt a sense of quiet relief as the back door of the truck banged shut.  
'Now we need to move,' Krondesh said.  
'One question,' the Finch said. 'Exit strategies. How, what and when?'  
'We go out through the front,' Dex said. 'It's closer to Kat's office then here, and the guards will all be clustered in here. Plus I'm going to create a distraction to lure them away.'  
She looked puzzled. 'What?'  
Inside his helmet, Dex smiled. 'You'll see. Now, door time. Krondesh, Finch, I want you covering the door. I'm going to open it.'  
Krondesh made one of his gestures and the hazy light of his barrier swam over his body. The Finch showed a moment of surprise as she saw that. Apparently she didn't know that he was a biotic.  
Phaeston in one hand, Dex opened the door.  
It revealed a corridor beyond, gloomy and poorly lit. One of the panels further down was flickering and crackling as it did so. Kat was clearly as penny-pinching with the electrics back here as she was with everything else.  
Dex gestured them into the corridor. He put Krondesh in front, with himself in the middle and the Finch covering the rear.  
'If you see one of Kat's guards,' Dex told them, 'shoot first. We're not here to play nice.'  
'That's very turian of you,' the Finch noted.  
It occurred to Dex that there was something that needed to be settled. 'If any of you think you can't do that, or might not be able to ... I need to know now.' He looked in particular at the Finch.  
'No problems here,' Krondesh put in.  
Dex kept looking at the Finch.  
She sighed. 'Yes. If necessary.'  
Dex nodded. 'Okay, good. Here's how we'll play it. Krondesh, you're on point. If we run into dense enemy mobs, I want you to scatter them with that shockwave of yours. Anyone with decent-looking armour, drop a Warp field on them.'  
'Okay.' The krogan actually sounded eager. 'Can I hit people?'  
Dex sighed. 'If you must. But, Krondesh?'  
'Yes?'  
'Try to use your analytical side rather than your death-wish side, if possible, okay?'  
'Deathwish?' The Finch sounded alarmed.  
'None of your business, mammal,' the krogan growled.  
‘Long story,’ Dex told her. ‘One we don’t have time for now.’  
'What will you be doing, army boy?' the krogan asked.  
'Organising,' Dex said. 'Since you keep insisting on delegating all of that. Also I'll be sabotaging weapons systems and doing anti-sniper duty.'  
'You'd be the expert on that,' Krondesh agreed.  
'What about me?' the Finch asked.  
'I need you to do two things,' Dex said. 'I need you to cover our rear. Corridors have two ends, after all.'  
'And the second thing?'  
'Keep an eye out for turrets or other gun emplacements,' Dex said. 'I'm not fussed about what you do with them - overload their circuitry, set them on fire, whatever. But keep them from giving us new breathing holes.'  
'Are there likely to be many?' the Finch asked.  
'Hard to say,' Dex replied. 'Kat didn't let me in on all her secrets. And when I was working for her, my jobs were all outside the premises. I only ever came here for meetings or to get my payment.'  
'She didn't even let us inside,' Krondesh said. 'When I worked for her on that job, she insisted on paying us outside, on the street. We had to drop the crate with the guns on the door step. The meeting the other day, with the three of us - that was the first time I'd been beyond the door.'  
'She doesn't like krogan,' Dex said.  
'I noticed that,' Krondesh said. 'Obviously she's just jealous. I mean, we're so much prettier. And we all know asari react badly to being out-prettied.'  
The Finch choked back a laugh. 'So we've got a krogan hitting stuff and a turian organising everything. All you need me to do is take all the credit, and then we can tick off all the stereotypes.'  
'Well we need some credit to take first,' Krondesh pointed out. ‘Or credits. Those would be nice too.’  
That observation put a dampener on the temporary good humour.  
After an awkward moment of silence, Dex called up an image on his omnitool. 'Here's the layout of this place, at least so far as I know it,' he said. 'We're in this corridor here, behind the vehicle bays.' He pointed to it on the display. 'In front of us, though that wall-' he pointed opposite them '-is the Golden Syringe Club.'  
'Where Kat is apparently farming pets for the Collectors,' Krondesh   
observed.  
Dex nodded. 'I guess we know now what happens to clients who get  
behind on their payment-plans. Anyway, this corridor runs along the back of the Club to there, where it branches.' He pointed on the map, then down the corridor ahead of them. The junction was visible in the gloom, in the mid-distance. 'On the right, there's a staircase-'  
'A stair case?' the Finch asked. 'But - you came in through the ceiling. From the next level up.'  
'That was in the Vehicle bays,' Dex explained patiently. 'They're twice the height of the usual floors. Elsewhere, this complex is split across two floors.'  
'Oh. Okay.' She subsided, sounding discontent.  
'The staircase goes up to the upper floor,' Dex said. 'Kat's office and the armoury are up there, along with the toilets, the kitchen and the guard room. And some of the admin offices.'  
'The guard room?' Krondesh didn't sound pleased. 'We're close to that?'  
'Yes, but I have a plan,' Dex said. 'The other vehicle bays, down this corridor - I'm going to sabotage the locks so they won't open on the doors. Finch, do you think you could hack a fire alarm system?'  
'Oh,' she said, sounding pleased. 'I reckon I could.'  
At that, Dex nodded in relief. 'Good. I wasn't quite sure that I had the right tools. Anyway, we set up a distraction, on a timer if possible. Once it goes off, we run upstairs. The guards all go down and congregate at the bays. They find the doors stuck, so that slows them down.'  
'Won't we pass them on the stairs?' Krondesh asked.  
'No,' Dex said. 'Look, here. See the top of the stairs? This bend in the corridor?'   
'Oh,' Krondesh said. 'There's a store cupboard.'  
'Yes. Just big enough for the three of us. We duck in there, close the door, wait for the alarms. When all the guards have run past and gone down the stairs, out we come. With any luck, we can get to Kat's office undetected.'  
Dex thought that the plan was looking surprisingly workable. Perhaps they could pull this off after all.  
'Exit?' the Finch asked.  
'Down the upper corridor, in the opposite direction. We'll have to go past the armoury. We will meet opposition there, so violence will be necessary, I'm afraid - but we have the benefit of surprise. And Kat rarely has more than two guards outside it, so we should have numbers.'  
'Those batarian idiots,' Krondesh said. 'We'll squash them without trouble. Hey, do you think we could break into the armoury and take what she owes us?'  
Dex thought longingly of the Black Widow. 'Tempting, but won't work,' he sighed. 'The armoury contains stuff that's valuable. It has decent security systems. We won't be able to get past them in reasonable time. And if we do, we risk getting trapped if that bank door shuts on us. They key to this is getting it done as fast as we can.'  
Krondesh sighed. 'Damn. Army boy's right. I hate it when that happens.'  
'Going back to the exit strategy,' Dex said, 'the corridor past the armoury leads to another staircase. That takes us down, back to the lower floor. In fact it takes us to the dealer's room, immediately behind main reception. At this point we make a bolt for the door, basically.'  
'If it's locked?' Krondesh asked.  
'Reception has store-style plate glass windows,' Dex replied. 'And we have guns. So we shoot ourselves a nice big hole in the windows and climb out. Might be an idea to do that anyway, actually. I'm not against running up a glazier's bill for Kat.'  
'Keeps the glaziers in business,' Krondesh said. 'Actually, wait, forget I said that. That's the classic broken window fallacy, isn't it? Damn my mouth. It's too clever for its own good. It should just shut up. Or go and read an economics book. Maybe both.'  
Dex had no idea what the krogan was raving about now, but he supposed it was best to let the alien reptile get it out of his system.  
'Right,' he said. 'Are we ready?'  
The Finch shrugged. 'Ready as I'm going to get, I suppose.'  
'Yes,' Krondesh said.  
'Okay. Doors first.' He pointed down the corridor.  
They moved down to the next set of vehicle bay doors. Dex gestured to the Finch. She knelt down next to the door-panel. Her omnitool flashed into life. She pored over it, frowning. Fingers moved over the haptic field. 'Hmm,' she said. Something beeped.  
'Anything I should know?' Dex asked.  
She shook her head. 'Just trying to get a timer set on these alarms. Best I think I can do is two minutes. The system's not really set up for this sort of thing - it's optimised for an instant response.'  
That made sense in the context of a fire, of course. But it was inconvenient for their purposes here.  
'Hold off for a moment, then,' Dex said. While the Finch waited, he palmed one of his newly-fabricated drones. It beeped into life. He sent it flying off down the corridor.  
'What are you doing?' the Finch asked.  
'Getting us some intelligence,' Dex said. He remembered his earlier error with the back room off of the bay. He wasn't going to repeat it. 'Let's see if anyone's waiting for us.'  
A grainy picture appeared over his omnitool display. The drone was right up near the ceiling, hopefully where its small shape would not be spotted. It moved down the corridor, relaying back what it saw.  
It approached the stairs. Dex sent it up.  
It reached the landing at the top. The coast was clear up to the right-angle bend further down the corridor.  
'See that door?' Dex said, pointed at a grainy rectangle. 'That's the closet we need to hide in. Fix it in your minds. We'll have to get to it quickly once we move.' He looked back at the Finch. 'Okay, set the system for the lockdown and the fake fire. Tell me when you're done.'  
The Finch nodded and got to work.  
Krondesh said, 'You're back to being Dex the platoon sergeant, aren't you?'  
'Yes,' Dex said.  
'Pity. I prefer the other you. He's more witty and less bossy.'  
The Finch glanced up, taking in this exchange with an unreadable expression on her face. She hurriedly looked down, back to her typing. A moment later, something beeped.  
'We're done,' she said. Behind them, the haptic lock on the door changed colour from green to red. 'Fire alarm is set to go in two minutes on my mark. Mark.'  
Dex glanced at the display. The upstairs corridor remained empty.  
'Okay,' he said. 'Everyone, move!'  
A turian, a krogan and a human ran down a corridor. Booted feet slapped against the concrete floor. Dex kept his Phaeston in one hand and his omnitool display up over the other arm, glancing back and forth between the corridor and the display. As they ran toward the stairs they were making more noise than he'd have liked, but there was no help for it. The other two weren't trained soldiers. They were just going to have to hope that luck was on their side.  
Feet thumped on stairs as they ascended. Dex was quite glad that the Finch was behind him. He'd seen a few pictures of what humans had on the end of their legs, and it was horrible. They walked on what appeared to be a sort of mutant hand - in fact, that was exactly what a human foot might be. Dex had vaguely heard somewhere that humans were descended from or related to some sort of tree-dwelling creatures. The teeth and the noses and the backward legs were bad enough, but what really creeped him out were those feet.  
He'd heard that some humans liked wearing open sandals. He was very glad that none of them seemed to live within Omega. (Open sandals within Omega were be bad idea; too much sharp-edged debris on the floor, too much dirty rubbish and too many people willing to step on your feet.)  
They reached the top of the stairs without discovery, only to meet an unexpected problem: the closet door was locked. Krondesh poked at the lock for a moment, to no avail. The haptic field remained stubbornly red, an objectionable hologram sat squarely in their way.  
'I can kick it in,' he offered.  
That would make a lot of noise, draw attention, and damage the door. Dex was about to intervene when the Finch abruptly shouldered her way past him.  
'Let me,' she said. Her omnitool blinked on, and she moved it over the lock. There was a beep and the haptic display changed colour. 'Forty seconds now.'  
The door slid gently open. This one apparently had well-oiled edges. It moved soundlessly and without resistance. Dex gestured Krondesh through, then the Finch, then himself.  
The door slid shut behind him.  
There was just enough room for the three of them inside the small space. Behind them a line of mops were hung up on a wall-mounted rack, with some buckets piled below. A cleaning drone sat, deactivated and dark, in a back corner of the room. The small chamber was lit by a single small lamp, hanging from the ceiling.  
'Cozy,' Krondesh said. The krogan shifted his weight. In the process he elbowed both Dex and the Finch. A shower of sparks burst off of her tech armour and a scent of burnt paint drifted through the room.  
'Be careful,' she said with asperity. 'Mass fields aren't toys. Krogan are already medium rare. It'd be better if you didn't cook yourself into being extinct.'  
Dex couldn’t see Krondesh’s face, but he could just imagine the glower on the krogan’s face. Before any further friction could erupt, Dex asked, 'How long?'  
'Soon. A few seconds, I think-'  
Outside in the corridor an alarm horn blared. 'FIRE FIRE FIRE!' a pre-recorded voice announced.  
'There's your answer,' the Finch said.  
'Okay, everyone,' Dex said, 'we'll need to shut up for a minute - let's not draw any attention if we can avoid it.'  
He tapped a quick set of instructions to his drone, telling it to self-destruct. No point leaving it hovering outside, where it might be seen. He heard a quiet pop from beyond the door, and there was a faint tinkle of falling debris. With luck, the responders would just think it was some random ash on the floor. The drone was designed to carbonise itself down to fine dust when it blew.  
The corridor they were on had two right-angle bends, one at the top of the stairs and the other further down, beyond the cleaning closet's door. The guards would be coming from beyond the second bend. Dex was hoping that perhaps the entire complex might be evacuated, but his working assumption was that they'd try to access the vehicle bays first.  
Sure enough, moments later, he heard the thudding of boots on the floor outside. There was also the rattle and jingle of poorly-secured equipment belts and Dex heard a few beeping noises. Guns being hurriedly unfolded, he suspected. Rough voices - batarian, from the accents - chattered back and forth.  
'-better not be another false alarm,' he heard one voice complain.  
'Might be intruders,' another one said. 'Didn't Silag say she thought she heard something, from downstairs?'  
'You know what she's like,' the first voice retorted. 'About as reliable as a krogan accountant!'  
Krondesh made a quiet growling noise. Dex raised a warning hand. The last thing they needed was an abruptly-enraged krogan, bursting out of the door. Admittedly the looks on the batarians' faces might be entertaining, but it would still be a bad idea.  
'Hey,' a new voice said. 'The alarm. Says here it's from Bay Two.'  
'Shit,' the first voice said. 'That's next to the one with the special goods.'  
The second voice laughed. They were very close to the cleaning closet now, probably just outside the door. The second voice said, 'We can't have a fire get in there. The boss won't be happy if they get damaged.'  
'Which one - T'raik or Karrean?'  
Dex blinked, and hurriedly tapped some commands into his omnitool. He'd better record this conversation.  
'Doesn't matter,' the first voice said. 'They'll both be mad. You were there at the last meeting. That Harbinger thing doesn't like it when we try and sell it damaged goods.' With distaste, the voice added, 'It always insists on a discount.'  
'I don't like that thing,' the newest voice said. 'All that talking about itself in the plural. Something seriously weird there.'  
The voices were retreating now. The first voice said, 'As long as they keep up the supply of Collector tech, it can be creepy as it likes. That scanning module it handed over last week, you know the one that can do real-time X-ray spectroscopy? I heard the boss got nearly twenty-nine million out of that volus mining consortium for it...'  
The voices were fading and there was an echo; they were on the stairs. A moment later and the conversation and the bootsteps faded into inaudibility.  
Dex moved to the door, signalling to the others to follow. He carefully slid the door open a tiny amount, then dropped to one knee. Very carefully, he slid the muzzle of his Phaeston through the gap. He tensed, awaiting a volley of fire-  
Nothing happened.  
Dex pulled the gun back and palmed out a fresh drone. He tossed it through. A grainy image appeared on his omnitool; the corridor outside was empty.  
Dex stood and shoved the door open. 'Everyone out,' he said. 'Krondesh - in front! Finch, behind!'  
They moved into the corridor, falling into position. Dex ordered the drone forward, around the corner. According to his feed the corridor beyond was momentarily clear. And he could see the door to Kat's office.  
'Let's move,' Dex said.  
They trotted toward the next bend. Dex kept an eye on his omnitool display. He waved Krondesh around the corner, then darted after him. The Finch brought up the rear.  
The corridor to Kat's office was just as Dex remembered. The buckets and the leaky pipes were still there. Water was plipping down. The familiar thrum of the overhead fans could be heard and felt a little, through the floor-plates.  
They were almost at the door.  
'Hey! Who the hell are you?'  
Two batarians, at the far end of the corridor. Instinct took over. Dex sized them up quickly. Neither of them had armour. Both of them were armed with bottom-end M8s. And they were bringing their guns up-  
Krondesh gestured. A shockwave roared out.  
It was a little far. Most of the shockwave's force was exerted. But enough hit the batarians to stagger them back. One of them screamed as Krondesh followed up with a Warp blast, straight to his face. A miasma of angry biotic energy enveloped him, hissing and crackling and tearing.  
Behind Dex, the Finch ducked down. Dex felt a smack of force against his chest. His suit's barriers flared. He stumbled back.  
Krondesh bellowed. Not very subtle, but the roar startled the batarians. Krogan were loud. Dex supposed their cover was broken now, but there was probably no help for it. Dex backed into the wall behind him. The sudden stop helped him regain his footing.  
The first batarian was on the floor, badly burned. Dex wasn't sure if he was still alive. If he was, he wouldn't be fighting again for some time. The second was trying to aim his M8-  
He didn't aim fast enough. Dex's Phaeston put a series of shots straight into his face. Blood sprayed out and the alien flopped lifelessly to the ground.  
'Quickly,' Dex said. 'Everyone into the office.'  
Krondesh sprinted to the door and banged his fist on the lock. It ground open - Kat still hadn't bothered to oil the mechanism.  
They piled through.  
The office was deserted. Dex hadn't thought it likely that they'd run into Kat here. She kept irregular hours. Work was something that Kat expected of other people, in large volumes, but she didn't always feel the same about herself.  
'Finch,' Dex said, 'there's the console.' He pointed at Kat's desk. 'Get to work. Put the data on your omnitool, and send me a backup squirt.'  
She nodded. 'Okay.' She walked over and sat herself behind the desk. She got to work on cracking access to the console.  
'Krondesh, you and I need to cover the door,' Dex said. 'That little fight will have attracted attention. We need to be ready.'  
The krogan nodded. 'Understood, army boy.' He took up a position to the left of the door. Dex flanked it on the right.  
They waited.  
The Finch was busy at the console, attention shifting back and forth between it and her omnitool.  
'Status?' Dex asked.  
She was frowning. 'Kat has some surprisingly good security VIs.'  
'Is that going to be a problem?'  
She shook her head. 'I'm halfway in. Mine are better. It's just taking a little longer than expected.'  
There was sound in the corridor. Feet moving at a quick trot, on the decking. Some metallic noises that Dex realised were guns unfolding themselves. A murmur of speech.  
A guttural voice said from behind the door, ‘You in there. Come out.’  
Dex gestured for silence. He looked inquiringly at the Finch. She raised a couple of fingers. Dex wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that. He assumed it meant that her work was still in progress.  
‘You there,’ the voice beyond the door said.  
Dex waved for silence again. He pointed at the Finch, then at the floor. Get down. She nodded, dropping down onto the floor from the chair. Kneeling, she carried on poking at the console. Dex hoped that the desk would supply enough cover.  
‘Okay,’ the voice on the other side said, ‘we’re opening this door.’  
Dex heard movement outside. He readied his Phaeston. There was a sound as someone hit a panel beside the door.  
‘If you don’t want to get hurt,’ the voice said, ‘come out now. I’m giving you a count to five. Five. Four. Three.’  
Dex turned and checked that the Finch was down. She was. He could see activity continuing on the console. Good.  
At two, the door hissed open.  
A batarian with an M8 was outlined against the corridor. He had a moment to look surprised before Krondesh hit him with a Warp blast. A hissing mass of dark energy boiled over him. He staggered back, screaming. A smell of burnt meat poured in through Dex’s filters.  
‘Shit,’ another voice said. ‘The boss...’  
The voice never finished. Krondesh wasn’t done. The krogan glanced Dex’s way. Taking the warning, Dex stepped back.  
The krogan performed another gesture.  
With a rattling, boneshaking roar, a shockwave rushed out. It ploughed straight into the batarian commander. And then it and the Warp field interacted.  
The boom was painful.  
The room shook. Dex was braced against the wall. He felt it jerk. The batarian disappeared, replaced by a shower of burnt meat. Something actually splashed on Dex’s visor. He had to hurriedly wipe it off. A greasy smear of ex-batarian obscured one part of his vision.  
There was screaming and confusion from the corridor. From behind the desk, Dex heard what sounded like someone vomiting. The batarian had been dressed normally, without either armour, shields or barriers, so the explosion had quite literally blown him apart.  
Dex realised he was grinning like a madman under his helmet. He gave Krondesh a quick thumbs-up - the krogan was covered in even more batarian, having been stood closer to the site of the biotic explosion.  
Then Dex reached down to one of his pouches. He pulled out a drone and thumbed it on. He tossed it into the corridor. The automatics took over and it took to the air. Then the corridor was lit with the flickering orange light of the flamethrower. Its fiery roar reverberated into the office.  
The screaming from the corridor was almost, but not quite, drowned out.  
There was a rattle of gunfire. Dex saw some shots head past the door, toward the drone’s direction. He heard some pings and crackles and the flame-light wobbled erratically.  
A moment later the drone fell silent. Dex ducked quickly round the door. A burst of fire from his Phaeston, swept across the corridor, and the final two batarians crumpled to the floor.  
A momentary silence descended.  
Then the red emergency lights along the corridor started flashing. ‘EMERGENCY EMERGENCY EMERGENCY,’ a stentorian recorded voice declared. ‘INTRUDERS DETECTED. ALL GUARDS TO MAIN AREA.’  
'That's not good,' Krondesh said.  
'No,' Dex agreed.  
Behind him he heard an omnitool's alert tone pinging. He glanced back. The Finch was on her feet behind the desk, a look of triumph on her face. 'I've got it,' she said. 'Everything's downloaded from Kat's machine!'  
'Excellent.' Dex felt a moment of triumph. 'Right - now we need to get out of here.'  
The Finch got up from behind the desk. Closing down her omnitool, she walked over to join them. 'Okay,' she said. 'What do we do?'  
'Get back in formation,' Dex said.  
An unreadable expression crossed her alien face. Then she blinked. 'Oh. You want me at the back again, don't you?'  
Dex nodded. She moved into place.  
He gestured them forward.  
The Finch looked down at the remains of the batarians. She shuddered. Gingerly, she stepped over the organic wreckage. The biotic explosion had not been tidy or clean. She averted her eyes from the other corpses.  
Dex noted the differences in their reactions. As a turian veteran, he'd seen worse, so he felt little real reaction to the carnage. He probably would feel some response later, he was sure, but there was a job to do right now. As for him, Krondesh showed no signs of being bothered by anything that had occurred. Squeamish krogan probably didn't survive long enough to encounter the rest of the galaxy, so Krondeh's murderous phlegmatism was no real surprise. Anyway, Dex had a hard time seeing Karrean and Kat's thugs as being any great loss to the galaxy. However, a nagging little voice at the back of his mind pointed out to him that until recently, he had been one of those thugs too.  
They trotted down the corridor, Krondesh in the lead, Dex just behind and Kat at the back. Dex had sent one of his drones on ahead. His attention was split between his omnitool and trying to cover the krogan with his Phaeston. Krondesh had his barrier up and the flickering light of the corona was distracting. The corridor was another transverse length, terminating in another stairwell. That stairwell ran down to the bottom level, just behind the main offices. All they had to do was get down to that level, and they would almost be out of Kat's complex.  
They almost got to the end of the corridor before the next group of reinforcements arrived. Dex's drone, which was just about to go down the stairwell, sent back an image of a clutch of batarians rounding the corner at the bottom. Dex felt a moment of total contempt for their amateurism - they came charging around the corner without even checking to see if it was clear.  
There were six of them.  
Dex thumped Krondesh on the shoulder. The krogan turned. Dex gestured to stop moving. Krondesh obeyed and-  
The Finch ran straight into Dex's back.  
She'd either not seen the gesture, or not realised what it meant. Either way, the results were the same. The two of them toppled over, straight into the krogan. Krondesh actually staggered at the double impact. He didn't fall, though. He shoved both of them back up.  
'Watch where you're going, mammal!' he growled.  
Then the batarians started shooting. A hissing rattle of fire rippled through the area they'd just occupied.  
Hovering near the top of the stairs, Dex's drone noticed the activity. A flare of flame roared out. Shouting and screaming filled the air.  
One batarian dropped, burnt to lifelessness.  
'Krondesh!' Dex barked. 'Shockwave! Now!'  
The flame had pushed the batarians back. This was a perfect situation for a shockwave. They were all bunched up near the top of the stairs.  
Krondesh gestured. His corona surged. Dex felt the local gravity lurch. With a howl of biotic energy, the shockwave thundered out. The shockwave hit into the milling mass of batarians. Ducking out from behind Krondesh, Dex fired off a burst of shots into them.  
The shockwave landed between two of them. They were picked up and smacked into the wall. Dex felt the thud as it reverberated through the floor. Backs broken, the batarians flopped to the ground.  
The sooty orange light of the drone-flame blinked out. There was a plink as the drone exploded. There was a moment of quiet.  
'Raaaah!' Krondesh ran at the batarians.  
Dex gnashed his mandibles together. Damnable krogan! The charging reptile was blocking his line of sight. Three batarians were still on their feet. He couldn't supply covering fire -  
There was a crackle. A flash of bluish light, a stink of ozone and an arc of lightning. Two of the batarians squealed and dropped to the floor. Their guns fell with a clatter.  
A shadow fell next to Dex on the floor. He looked over. The Finch was there. Her omnitool was engaged. 'An overload pulse,' she said. 'Doesn't hurt them the way it hurts machines. But it did give them a nasty shock.' Then she made that awful smiling gesture that humans insisted on. Dex just barely managed not to shudder at the sight of those horribly-white slab-teeth. Spirits, the way they gleamed!  
There was a scream from the far end of the corridor. Dex's head snapped back, just in time to watch Krondesh beat the remaining batarian into a pulp. It was savage. Dex heard each bone as it broke. The krogan ended it by smashing the batarian's head into the wall.  
It had only taken a matter of moments, but six more of Kat's guards   
were dead.  
'That was fun!' Krondesh said.  
Dex wasn't adept at reading human expressions, but he could see that the Finch felt conflicted. 'This is...' She shook her head. 'I mean... Oh God, let's just get the fuck out of here. Before any more come by.'  
'They're not good people,' Dex told her, as he stood up. He checked the thermal clip on his Phaeston. He'd only fired a few shots, so there was about eighty percent capacity left. Good enough for now. 'The work for Karrean and Kat. They've been selling people to the Collectors. Probably after deliberately forcing them into default on their drug-payments.'  
The Finch shuddered. 'Yes, but - how are we good people, after that?' She pointed at the corpses.  
The krogan lumbered over. 'That's a simple one, mammal,' Krondesh said. 'If they weren't dead, by now you'd be on your way back to the pod room. Or shot. Either way, that's not going to be good for your person.'  
A momentary puzzled look crossed the Finch's face. 'I do have a name,' she said.  
'I know, mammal,' Krondesh said.  
Dex glanced at the Finch. 'He does this when he hasn't decided if he likes you or not,' he said. 'Until about lunchtime, I was "Oi you, bird!".'  
'Damn right you were,' Krondesh agreed. 'If you forget to buy me dinner I might just bird you again.'  
'Ah' the Finch said, sounding uncertain. She kept glancing at the bodies.  
It occurred to Dex that actually, he had no idea what the Finch's name was. She'd never said. And why did she call herself the Finch? Unless maybe that was her name? But as far as he knew, humans didn't usually tend to call themselves "the something" or "a whatever" or "this entity" - they weren't like the hanar.  
With a twitch of his mandibles Dex dismissed the thought. 'Let's get out of here,' he said. 'Stairs. Now.'  
They started toward the stairs. Not meaning to copy the batarians' mistake, Dex palmed another drone. He tossed it around the corner, hearing the little whir as its eezo motors came to life.  
There was the door to the armoury, right in front of them. Dex thought of the Black Widow sat inside its vault. He felt a frustrated burst of gun-envy. He noted Krondesh glancing at the door too. Oh well - no help for it. The door-hologram blinked with a complex mass of encryption symbols. The door itself was ominously-solid. No way they'd be getting past that any time soon, even with the Finch's assistance. There wasn't any point worrying about it any further. What was inside the vault would be staying there.  
He turned his attention back to the stairs.  
He didn't see anyone on the stairs. 'Down we go,' he said. 'Fast!'  
Feet pounded on the risers. They sprinted down. There it was. Dex could see the short corridor below, leading to the door to the main lobby. Then they were out of the stairs, in the corridor.  
Alarms were still howling and recorded voices bellowing over the speakers. Dex ignored them. They were very close to the doors -  
He ran into it. The impact jarred his shoulder. He gasped, staggering back. 'Spirits - locked!'  
An angry red hologram blinked into life before him. The security systems, Dex realised. They'd been locked in! Any moment now, reinforcements would arrive. The team had enjoyed some luck with their previous opponents. Those opponents had been surprised and disorganised, but that would change. They would know by now how bad the threat they faced was.  
'Not for long.' The Finch planted herself in front of the lock. Her omnitool blinked on. 'Watch my back, will you?' She turned her attention to the lock.  
Dex gestured to the krogan. He and Krondesh took up station behind the Finch, watching the stairs. The Finch was muttering to herself as she worked. It wasn't quite loud enough for Dex's omnitool translator module, but he caught the odd swearword in Human Speak. (Or whatever the language was called. Dex had heard somewhere that humans actually had thousands of languages, although only a dozen or so were spoken by a large proportion of them. He found it baffling - how had they managed prior to omnitools?)  
There was a buzzing sound from up the corridor. Dex scowled. What was that noise? It sounded familiar. He ordered his drone to go and investigate. It moved toward the stairs -  
He just caught a glimpse of the other drone as it rounded the corner. A glowing orange shape with internal lights gleaming. A spark of energy emitted. Heading straight toward him -  
His shields flared. Blue light all around him. A shock ripping through his body. Dex convulsed. He collapsed to the ground. The Phaeston clattered down next to him. He rolled onto his side. He gasped, clutching at his chest.  
Dimly he heard Krondesh's shotgun roar as the krogan blasted the drone. It fizzled and collapsed.  
'Shit,' Dex gasped. 'Shit, shit, shit!'  
'What? The Finch - she was turning away from the lock, looking alarmed. 'Are you -'  
'No - get back! Keep working!' Dex managed to gasp the words out, past the pain. She blinked, but got back to work.  
A massive shape bent over him. Krondesh. The krogan hauled him to his feet. Dex sagged against Krondesh's arm.  
With a groan, he pulled himself to his feet. He looked down. 'Spirits,' he said. A whiff of smoke drifted up from a damaged plate. Dex beat at it with a hand. Some ash fell away and the smouldering stopped.  
'An overload pulse,' Krondesh said.  
Dex nodded weakly. The pulse had taken down his shields. In addition it had damaged the armour underneath. Some of the charge must have crossed the suit's insulation - that was the shock that had stunned him. Most of the current had been dissipated, but in doing so it had dumped a lot of heat into the Predator suit's outer plating. Across the left side of his torso, the plating was charred and cracked. As he looked, a piece actually fell off. It landed on the floor with a clatter. A few square centimetres of the undersuit were now exposed to the air.  
'You're lucky,' Krondesh said.  
'Am I?'  
'If you were in a cheaper hardsuit, you'd be dead,' the krogan told him. 'Turian toasty. Cooked in your own juices.'  
Out of the corner of his eye, Dex saw the Finch shudder. Nonetheless she doggedly kept her attention on hacking the lock. Apparently she wasn't going to let ghoulish krogan distract her.  
'Normally people set the pulses up so they jump,' Dex said. Electrical discharge-arcs were a useful tool; you could knock out multiple opponents with them. 'That drone must've been set up for maximum damage.'  
Dex shook his head, trying to clear the dizziness. He looked around. 'Spirits,' he said. 'We're sitting ducks in this corridor. There's no cover-'  
'Another drone!' Krondesh was abruptly all business.  
Sure enough, another glowing ball was emerging around the corner at the top of the stairs behind them.  
'Distract it!' Dex told Krondesh.  
Krondesh gestured and fired off a Warp ball at it. That wouldn't do much to the drone - the solid parts were buried deep inside its shields and mass fields - but it would distract its VI for a moment.  
Dex brought up his omnitool. Luckily the overload pulse had hit him on the opposite side of his body, so the omnitool hadn't been much affected by it. Did the enemy drone have any open network ports?  
Yes, there were. They were encrypted, but Dex had something that could deal with that. He sent a bit of specialised code over to the drone. The drone paused. Then it wheeled around and disappeared back around the corner.  
'What did you do?' Krondesh asked.  
Inside his helmet, Dex smirked. 'Let's just say whoever owns that drone is about to get a-'  
There was an electric crackle, a yelp and a wail of pain from somewhere along the upper corridor. An electric surprise had been delivered. Dex felt a moment's vicious glee.  
'You hacked it, didn't you?' Krondesh said. 'Nasty, nasty turian.' Then he started laughing.  
'It buys us a few seconds,' Dex said. 'They'll purge its cache and reset it, and then it'll be back under control. Then it comes back-'  
There was a beep, a whir and a grinding of motors.  
'YES!' The Finch punched the air. 'I've got the door!'  
Sure enough, it was opening.  
Dex bent down and retrieved his gun. Straightening up, he noted that the pain was subsiding. He took a deep breath, steadying himself.  
There was a buzz from the stairs. The drone was on its way back. Apparently its operator had regained control.  
'Okay,' Dex said. 'Let's run!'  
The three of them dived through the opening doorway.  
They found themselves in the public areas of the dealership. The reception desk was just in front of them. There was no sign of the receptionist. From the up-turned chair beside the desk, Dex guessed that she'd run off as soon as she heard the shooting. Not a bad choice, all considered.  
A moment later and they were out past the reception desk, into the main lobby. There were several clients here, milling around in confusion. The guards had apparently abandoned them.  
One of the clients actually approached them. A salarian, dressed in expensive-looking but not-recently-cleaned clothes, with eyes that seemed unfocused. 'Excuse me,' he said. 'What's going on? Can you tell me when I get to see my dealer? I'm a very important client!'  
'We're not security,' Krondesh told him.  
The salarian took in their guns, then blinked. He looked even more confused. 'What are you then?'  
'Burglars,' Krondesh told him.  
The salarian's face flared with a moment of blind panic, then he collapsed in a faint. Krondesh prodded him with a boot. There was no movement. 'We broke a salarian,' the krogan noted. 'Whatever else happens today, it was worth it for that!'  
'Doors,' Dex said, pointing. 'Now!'  
And there they were. On the other side of the lobby, there were two closed, plate glass doors. A kinetic barrier could be seen, a faint blue light rippling over them. The doors themselves appeared to be locked.  
'Can you get them open?' Dex asked the Finch.  
'Yes,' she said, pursing her lips. 'But to be honest, it might be quicker just to smash through. Do we care if Kat has an expensive damage bill?'  
'Not particularly,' Dex said. He raised his Phaeston. He took a quick look around the room. Raising his voice, he said, 'All of you! We're about to shoot our way out. There's going to be a lot of broken glass flying around. If you don't want to get hurt, take cover!'  
'If we all fire together,' the Finch noted, 'that should collapse the barrier. It doesn't look strong enough to stand up to concentrated fire.'  
The junkies had congregated on the far side of the lobby, where they were nervously eyeing the three. Dex judged that they were as safe from broken glass as they were likely to get. 'Okay,' he said. 'Everyone concentrate fire on the lock!' The hologram was a conveniently-placed target. 'On my mark ... mark!'  
The Phaeston rattled. Krondesh's shotgun boomed. The Finch's pistol barked. The sounds reverberated in the lobby. Out of the corner of his eye, Dex saw several of the junkies drop to the floor and cower.  
A barrage of mass accelerator rounds slammed into the door's barrier. It flared, crackled and collapsed. Then the door itself buckled under the assault. With a hiss and a tinkle, glass sprayed out. A moment later, the lock-hologram fizzled away.  
The door was open.  
Behind them, Dex realised he could hear the sound of boots slapping against steps. Company was on its way. 'Krondesh! One shockwave! Behind us - now!'  
The krogan obliged. A shockwave cascaded out, back toward the corridor and the stairs.  
There were confused shouts from the stairs.  
'Okay everyone,' Dex said. 'Let's run!'  
They rushed over to the door. The gunfire had smashed a decent-sized hole in the glass. Dex gestured the Finch through first, then Krondesh, and lastly himself. As they emerged onto the outside, he palmed his last drone and tossed it back through the hole. Hopefully the flamethrower would slow pursuit down.  
'Wow,' Krondesh said. 'We've actually got out! We've done it!'  
And here they were. Outside.  
'Not quite yet,' Dex said. 'We still need to get away. Finch, I don't suppose you could crack a skycar?'  
She nodded. 'Probably. How about that one?' She pointed.  
Kat's dealership had its store front onto one of Omega's many commercial squares. A skycar artery ran directly overhead. Around them were a jumbled collection of shops and a couple of eateries. The area was lit with flickering neon signs and holograms and a couple of lamp posts. Most of the other shops had their shutters down - Omegan residents had an instinct for trouble, and those shutters would have dropped the moment they heard gunfire from Kat's establishment.  
Immediately in front of them was a small rank of parked skycars. They presumably belonged to clients of Kat's. They were all lined up in front of the glass frontage, where their owners could keep an eye on them. Car-theft was a real risk inside Omega.  
The Finch was pointing at a looking red Cision model, sat at the end of the row. The car was a good mark, but the paint was scratched and it had a few dents. It was anonymous enough that it wouldn't attract too much attention.  
Dex nodded. 'That will do. Let's go!'  
Moments later, they were at the skycar. The Finch had her omnitool out. Dex heard shooting and shouts from behind them. He gestured to Krondesh. They turned to cover the Finch while she worked.  
His drone was still active but the turret-flame was getting shorter and weaker. There was concentrated fire coming from the corridor. The guards were pinned down for now, but it was only a matter of time before they took the drone down. Dex couldn't get a clear view all the way into the corridor, but from what he could see, this lot had better guns and actual hardsuits. There seemed to be more co-ordination to their efforts and less chaos. Apparently the defenders had got their act together, at long last.  
Behind him, there was a beep. He heard the hiss-click of the doors opening. 'We're in,' the Finch reported.  
The skycar was open. The three of them scrambled in. Dex found himself in a seat, pulling down the harness. As he did, he saw the drone's flare die out. Troops poured out of the corridor.  
'Spirits,' Dex said. 'We'd better get out of here.'  
Then he realsied the Finch was in the driving seat. She started poking at the controls. The skycar's doors dropped down around them.  
Outside, the first of the defenders had reached the shattered wreckage of the door. Guns were being raised.  
'I know somewhere safe,' she said. 'We'll go there!'  
Before Dex could argue, she grabbed the control-yoke and pulled it back. The skycar lifted up, off the parking lot.  
A few stray shots followed them into the sky, but they all fell short as the car departed.


	12. Introductions and Interludes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A turian and a krogan find themselves inside an alien’s house.
> 
> Krondesh is delighted by the presence of many, many books and secretly hopes to make a good impression on their owner. Dex is confronted by the bizarreness of alien biology, and also by an awkward shortage of casual clothing. At long last, the Finch’s story is revealed.
> 
> Discussion occurs on various topics.

'This is where you live?' Dex started at his surrounds.  
The Finch nodded. 'This is my actual address, not the one I give to the likes of Kat. That's just an office in a generic commercial block.'  
The skycar had taken a long and circuitous route around the district. It had been dumped about half an hour's walk away from their actual destination. The Finch had taken them on a complicated route through sidestreets and small squares, avoiding well-populated main areas. Finally, they had arrived here.  
The three were stood just beyond the main door, inside the Finch's residence.  
'This is much bigger than your tiny box,' Krondesh informed Dex.  
'Thanks. I think.'  
But the krogan was right. The Finch obviously made far more money than either of them. Her apartment was split across two levels, with a mezzanine bedroom area at the back, a kitchen and a bathroom below it, and a large open-plan living area at the front. A group of sofas clustered around a fake fireplace on one wall, a table and chairs were sat up against the opposite wall, and various potted Earth plants were dotted around. The lights in the apartment were tuned for Earth's sun, so to Dex's eyes the whole place had an odd, yellowish-orange shade. It was a bit disorienting, like finding yourself trapped in an unexpected sunset.  
Still, it was obvious this was a very expensive dwelling.  
Krondesh pointed. 'Are those ... actual books?'  
The walls were lined with shelves. Dex had taken their contents for decoration, but looking more closely, he realised they weren't.  
The Finch nodded. 'I'm a collector,' she said. 'The non-buggy, non-poddy kind, I mean.'  
As if mesmerised, the krogan walked over to one of the shelves. He reached out and very gently pulled a volume out. He opened it at a page, and then stood there, apparently staring at it. It was hard to tell for sure as the alien reptile was still wearing his helmet.  
'Uh, what's he doing?' the Finch asked, looking uncertain.  
'I think,' Dex said, 'he's reading. You do know this is a literate krogan, right?'  
The Finch shrugged. 'Okay.' She reached up and cancelled her tech armour. With a hiss and a fizzle, the fields dissipated. 'I don't suppose I need this anymore, do I?'  
Dex looked down and pushed a key on his Phaeston. With a beep, the gun folded up and shut down. He replaced it onto its carry point on his back. Then he reached up and removed his helmet. He blinked as the cool air played over his face. 'Feels good to be out of that,' he said.  
The Finch looked at the damage to his suit. She frowned. 'We'll have to see if we can get that fixed,' she said.  
Dex looked down. The damage was pretty bad. He sighed. 'I don't know if it is fixable,' he said. 'There aren't exactly a lot of Predator components lying around.'  
The krogan was still stood over by the bookcase, apparently mesmerised.  
The Finch's body made a strange noise. She blinked and looked surprised. 'Apparently I'm hungry,' she said.  
'Food would be a good idea,' Dex said.  
She considered it for a moment. 'I can get some dextro stuff in,' she said. 'I'll have to order it, though.'  
'All right. While you get that sorted out, mind if I use your bathroom?'  
She shook her head. 'Go ahead. Have a shower, if you want.'  
That, Dex supposed, could be quite a good idea.

* * *

The bathroom turned out to be a remarkable expanse of gleaming metal and polished faux-stone surfaces. A lot of money had evidently been spent on it. The shower had multiple settings, including several optimised for aliens. The refreshment was welcome. Dex came out of it feeling somewhat more alive than he had going in. He found himself confronted by an unexpected problem - apart from the damaged Predator suit, he had no other clothing with him. Temporarily, Dex wrapped himself in one of the Finch's towels. Along with the bathroom's plush fittings, she had quite a collection of them, all fluffy white things.  
As the extractor fan noisily pulled out the last of the steam, Dex eased open the door. He stepped out, back into the apartment proper. Walking out into an alien’s apartment whilst dressed only in a towel felt strange but Dex had done weirder things in his life, and there wasn’t much help for it. Resolute in his half-dressed state, he squared his shoulders and walked out.  
And he immediately shuddered at the coldness in the air. His damp skin and plates registered the chill. It soaked up through the polished floor, into his feet. He had to resist an urge to dive back into the shower, where at least it was warm.  
He kept walking.   
The Finch was in the kitchen area, preparing some weird-looking human meal. Dex noted she'd changed her clothes, to a utilitarian jumpsuit and a fresh pair of boots.  
She heard the door click shut. She looked up, saw him, blinked and then lifted an eyebrow.  
'What?' he asked.  
'I've got a krogan spread out with all my books in the lounge,' she said. 'I had to get rid of my pants and T-shirt because too many bloodstains. And now there's a half-dressed alien stood outside my bathroom.'  
Dex shivered. The apartment was warm enough for a human, he suspected, but it certainly wasn't warm enough for a turian, particularly not one who was wearing only a towel around his bottom half. 'Yeah,' he said, 'I'm a bit short in the clothing department.'  
She nodded. 'Okay. If you've got any templates stored in your omnitool, the fab can probably run something off.' She gestured toward the other side of the main room. Over there Dex noted what looked like a work area, with an office chair and a big home console with a surprising collection of screens. Beside it was the unmistakeable shape of a home fabricator.  
'Thanks,' he said.  
Dex's omnitool was still plugged into his armour. The suit was sat in a neatly-arranged stack of pieces in the bathroom. Dex had to go and retrieve them. A trick he'd learned in the army was bundling all the parts up inside the undersuit, and using that effectively as a bag. Doing that made carrying around disassembled combat suit a lot easier. He'd left his Phaeston and the remaining grenades outside the bathroom - he didn't want to risk getting water on them.  
Dex briefly returned to the bathroom, to retrieve his items.  
He walked over to the fabricator, carrying the bundle. Behind him, the Finch was chopping something with a knife. He wondered why she did this herself - any modern kitchen VI could have done all the tedious food-prep for her. Then he wondered if perhaps she was one of those strange people who enjoyed cooking? Or was this some bizarre human cultural thing? He supposed either was possible.  
At the fabricator he loaded in an appropriate set of templates from his omnitool. The fabricator started chugging and whirring. It would take it about fifteen minutes to extrude the full set of clothes. In the meantime, Dex retrieved an extra towel from the bathroom and wrapped it over his shoulders.  
While the fabricator was busy, he went to join the Finch over in the kitchen. He tried not to shiver too much. She had her sleeves rolled up, he noted. 'Do you usually keep it this cold in here?' he asked her.  
The Finch blinked. 'The thermostat's set to nineteen degrees centigrade,' she said.  
The turian shuddered. 'No wonder I feel cold, then!'  
The Finch carried on chopping. 'Actually for humans, this is a reasonable indoor temperature,' she said. 'And if I were back home, outdoors, this would be a good spring afternoon.'  
Chop, chop, chop. The knife cracked rhythmically into the chopping board. A pile of dissected vegetables was emerging behind it.  
'I heard Earth is cold,' Dex said. 'Someone told me it has polar caps, actually.'  
The Finch shook her head. 'No,' she said. 'Not anymore. It did, until about the end of the last century. My grandfather was just old enough to remember the last time it ever snowed in London. That would've been 2081, I think. He used to tell tales about metre-deep drifts and days of blizzards.' She snorted.  
'That sounds horrible.' Dex had done cold-weather ops training, and he'd once been on a deployment to an icebound planet in the Attican Traverse. He'd hated every minute of the experience.  
She shook her head. 'I looked the details up in one of the extranet news archives, when I was doing my undergraduate degree. Turns out the fall was really more like just a few flakes. Some of it settled for nearly half an hour before it all melted. There were some pictures, stuff people had taken on their phones.'  
'Phones? What's a phone?' Omnitool translation was normally like oxygen - you only noticed it when it wasn't there. But neither Dex's omnitool nor the Finch's had recognised the odd set of phonemes emitted by the human. He managed to reproduce the alien syllables, just about, but the pronunciation sounded wrong to his ears.  
The Finch shook her head and put the knife down. It clacked onto the chopping board. 'Dex,' she said, 'phones were what people had on Earth before omnitools. A portable communications device.'  
'Before ... ?' Dex felt a moment of disorientation. In the the Hierarchy, omnitool technology was centuries old. ‘But ... what?’  
The Finch looked at him, drumming her fingers on the countertop.  
'I was in primary school,' she said.  
'What?' Dex felt confused. What had that got to do with anything?  
'I was seven,' she said, 'in 2148. When they dug up that prothean cache. On Mars. I remember it was all over the news. I didn't really understand it - I was only a child. But all the grown-ups were talking. Just saying the same things over and over again, really. Like no-one knew what was happening. Like they were all afraid and excited and confused, and they were talking to cover it all.'  
Something dawned on Dex: the humans' first contact with the Citadel cultures had happened within living memory. There were people walking around and talking and breathing, who remembered thinking they might be the only intelligence in the entire galaxy.  
More than that, one of those people was stood in the room with him.  
He suddenly realised that there was a very fundamental gulf of experience between him and the Finch. Whoever else he might have been in a past life, he’d never lived in a closed society, bounded into a single isolated solar system. He’d never looked up at the sky and felt lonely. He’d never had to wonder if the universe was the empty, silent void that it appeared.  
The Finch, however, was another matter.  
'When I was fifteen,' she said, 'I saw my first actual alien. Not in person, I might add. On the evening news.'  
If she'd been seven in 2148 ...  
'Shanxi,' Dex said, feeling abruptly uneasy.  
He could hear the apartment’s air vents, quietly hissing somewhere overhead. They were better-maintained than most of Omega’s public vents. The sound was quieter and softer.  
She nodded. 'Yes. Imagine what that was like. A few years before, we find alien ruins on the next planet out. Then we find that one of the things in our Kuiper Belt is actually a deep-frozen mass relay. And before you know it, we've got actual live aliens attacking one of our colonies!'  
She picked up a pan and put it next to the chopping board. She then produced a bottle of a yellow oil, and poured some into the pan. She replaced the bottle, picked up the chopping board with one hand and took the knife in the other. She brushed the chopped greens into the pan with it. Quickly inspecting the pan, and apparently finding it to her satisfaction, she replaced the chopping board and the knife.  
'Vegetable stir fry,' she said, answering a question Dex hadn't asked. 'I'm feeling a little hungry. Just need some noodles to go with it.' She picked up the pan and carried it to the hob.  
'You lived through all of this,' Dex said.  
The Finch had deposited the pan on the hob. She dropped down below the counter. Dex heard a cupboard opening, and the sounds of rummaging. A moment later, she reappeared with a new pan and a packet of noodles. With a look of concentration, she put the noodles in the pan, then took it to the sink and filled it up.  
She didn't answer him until everything was on the hob and the electric elements were on.  
'Yes,' she said finally, 'yes I did. And after all that, now I live here, literally on the opposite side of the galaxy from where I was born. You can't even see the Sun here - it's too far away, and the Bulge is directly in between! And the whole experience was seamless - or nothing but seams, depending on how you look at it. You're too busy trying to survive through each dislocation to notice just how fucking weird they all are.'  
Dex had almost forgotten how cold it was in the apartment. Behind them, there was a beeping noise.  
The Finch glanced toward the fab. 'Seems your pants are ready,' she said.  
The fabricator had finished extruding a roughly Dex-sized turian casual suit. The template was only averagely fashionable, but it did include a lot of pockets, and that was something Dex definitely needed. 'I'll just borrow the bathroom again!' he said.  
A few moments later, the turian was properly dressed. Feeling warmer, Dex also felt happier. The towels had been returned to their rack. However, the conversation earlier had left something nagging at him.  
He walked back over to the kitchen. The Finch was stirring one of the pans, and watching the noodles in the other. She glanced up as he approached. 'I've ordered something to eat,' she said. 'It should arrive soon. When it does, I'll answer the door. If you just stay out of sight, it might be for the best. I doubt the delivery company work for Kat, though.'  
Dex nodded, then just stood there, watching her.  
The Finch carried on cooking for a short while. Then she noticed his presence. 'What?' she asked.  
'Who are you?' Dex said. 'I mean really - who?'  
'Maybe I can help with that,' a new but familiar voice said. A very large shadow spilled over Dex's new boots.  
Looking to his side, Dex discovered that he was being loomed over by a krogan. Krondesh was still in his armour, but he'd removed the helmet. His shotgun was folded up and mounted on his back, and he had the Phalanx hanging on his belt. The maw-tooth knife was sheathed over his other hip.  
The krogan was holding a book.  
'Oh,' the Finch said, sounding oddly resigned. 'Should've realised you were going to find that.'  
The book was roughly rectangular. It was black, with silver lettering. Something was spelt out in Humanish - Dex had no idea what it said. If he'd scanned the text with his omnitool, it would be able to furnish a translation, and there were commercially-available eyepieces that could do the same thing, but he didn't really have the opportunity for either.  
'What is it?' Dex asked.  
Krondesh hefted the book, then opened it, flicking through it.  
The Finch, Dex noted, winced.  
'It's called "Large-scale interferometry and its implications for weakly Turing-compliant image analysis pipelines",' Krondesh said, turning the cover over and pointing at some of the lettering.  
Dex blinked. 'You can read Human?'  
The krogan rolled his eyes. 'I can read English, bird-brain. I can also read a bit of German. Haven't had much luck with the Romance languages, though. And you know what? I'm also quite fluent in Hierarchy Standard - I even have the accent!'  
The krogan glared at Dex.  
Something dawned on him. 'You've been talking it the whole time, haven't you?'  
'Yes,' the krogan said. As Dex was actually paying attention now, he realised he was watching the krogan's mouth forming the syllables. Usually almost all alien speech was efficiently translated by the speaker's omnitool and Krondesh -  
'You don't have an omnitool,' Dex remembered.  
'No,' Krondesh said. 'How do you think I've got by for the last few years? For the record I speak and read eight languages. Including the salarian Trade-speak and two of the main asari tongues. Luckily most sensible species don't have more than four or five, so speaking the main one is usually enough.' He turned and glared at the Finch. 'And then there's you lot with your three thousand or so. Because you just have to be annoying like that.'  
The Finch put her hands up. 'Not my fault. Anyway, I only speak English, so you apparently have the advantage.'  
'Yeah, if I ever find myself in Berlin, I'm sure it'll be really useful,' the krogan snarked. ‘I’ll be able to buy a hotdog and tell people I’m lost. Like they won’t already know that!’  
Dex wasn’t paying attention. 'I hadn't noticed,' he marvelled. 'How could I have missed that?'  
'Typical Council species,' the krogan said dismissively. 'You're just too used to being masters of the universe. So you miss what's right under your nose.'  
The Finch was looking - interested? Or was that the expression humans used when they needed the toilet? Dex still wasn't quite sure. She turned down the heat on the hob and put the cooking implements down. She leaned forward and rapped a knuckle on the countertop. 'Where did you learn all of this?' she asked, fixing the krogan with an intense gaze.  
Krondesh shrugged. 'Mostly on Tuchanka. My Clan - my former Clan's lands. There was a school. It was run by a dissident asari.'  
The Finch frowned. 'A dissident asari?'  
'Matriarch Kelia. She didn't like the Council's policy toward us. She thought the krogan were deliberately being kept in poverty, through a mix of covert discrimination and overt trade policy. So as to ensure that Council-linked companies always had cheap access to lots of krogan mercs.'  
The Finch looked puzzled. 'Why? And how?'  
Krondesh looked annoyed, then he sighed. 'If Tuchanka's economy ever started to recover, you know, from what happened in the Rebellions - well, if that happened, there might be jobs for us other than fighting and labouring. And those of us who did still end up as mercs could charge more, because they'd be fewer in number. And the galaxy hates the krogan and needs lots of mercs. Funny how supposedly peace-loving peoples like to farm their violence out elsewhere.'  
Some sort of enlightenment appeared to dawn behind the Finch's eyes. 'So essentially, this Kelia person was arguing that the Council cultures are imperialists, at least in the economic sense?'  
Krondesh nodded. 'Maybe not exactly those words, but she did think along those lines. The other possibility, of course, is that the Council are just a bunch of racist shits.' The krogan shrugged, his armour rattling. 'Either way, the end result is the same. Centuries later, Tuchanka is still half in ruins. Kelia didn't like it. She thought it was immoral. So she tried to challenge it. Moved to Tuchanka and set up a school.'  
Dex felt his mandibles move. Someone who considered living on the krogan homeworld a good idea? That was new. And, he felt, rather unwise. 'Not very safe,' he noted.  
Krondesh fixed him with a glare. 'For the record, it was the Kelphic Valley,' he said. 'All the other krogan think we're soft, because the food supply's better. We don't get the periodic famines like everyone else does. And because people aren't so malnourished, we don't suffer as much with all the epidemics, either. Kelia was living in one of the safest places on the planet.'  
Dex felt unreassured. He wouldn't be adding the Kelphic Valley to any future travel itineraries.  
'Kelia sounds interesting,' the Finch said. ‘If I ever go to Tuchanka I might look her up.’  
‘You’re a bit late, mammal,’ Krondesh growled. ‘She’s dead.’  
The Finch blinked. ‘Dead? Did someone not appreciate their education?’  
‘The salarians,’ Krondesh said. ‘They killed her.’  
The Finch looked puzzled. ‘The salarians? Why? And how? I mean, Tuchanka’s not safe for them. How could they?’  
Krondesh sighed. ‘One night there was a fire at the main school building. Building - ha! Really just some pre-fabbed huts. But we all ran over there to try and put it out. Then someone noticed Kelia wasn’t there. Turns out she was in her house - what was left of her, anyway. She had to be ID’ed from dental records, because everything else was pizza.’  
The Finch stared but said nothing.  
‘Splash damage,’ Krondesh continued. ‘That’s how we knew it was froggies that did it. A Scorpion pistol.’  
‘Oh,’ Dex said, a reluctant enlightenment dawning. ‘Yes, they do tend to splatter things, don’t they?’ On one deployment, his platoon had supported an STG team. Dex had seen firsthand what a Scorpion could do.  
Krondesh nodded. ‘One of STG’s little toys.’  
‘But going after a teacher?’ The Finch didn’t seem convinced. ‘That seems excessive.’  
Krondesh sighed. ‘Mammal, I just explained why. From the Council’s point of view, Kelia was one of the most dangerous people alive. Keeping the krogan in destitution is a centuries-old policy! And she was busy undermining it.’  
The krogan’s words were cynical and at one time in the past, Dex would have denounced them as lies. But now he was not so sure. He found himself thinking of his former commanding officer, and that man’s sense of priorities. The success of the mission and the wellbeing of his soldiers had been secondary for the lieutenant - protecting his family’s commercial assets had come before everything. Dex wanted to believe that the lieutenant was an aberration, that he wasn’t really a normal product of the turian system - but could Dex really believe that now? He wasn’t certain.  
‘But how could they even get onto Tuchanka?’ the Finch asked. ‘Surely the CDEM keep a close eye on ship traffic?’  
Krondesh snorted. ‘Oddly enough, an hour before the fire, the garrison had a VI crash. The traffic systems were offline for two days.’  
‘Convenient timing,’ Dex noted.  
‘Quite, army boy. One might even say, too convenient. And two days is plenty of time to get to and from the Aralakh Relay. There’s plenty of uninhabited wasteland where you could land a ship. No-one would see it. Anyway we also found a few salarian-shaped bootprints around outside the house.’  
The Finch frowned. ‘What, just left there? Isn’t that a bit amateur?’  
‘They wanted us to know,’ Krondesh said. ‘Part of this was intimidation value, I reckon. They wanted us to know what happens if we try to go all upwardly mobile.’  
‘So what happened?’  
‘The Clan Lord swore blood feud on the salarians. A lot of fights broke out - people got accused of being informers. Patrols were doubled over our - my former Clan’s lands. It was all a bit tense for a few weeks, but we never found any hard evidence. Nothing that would actually make the galaxy listen.’  
‘Assuming it even cared,’ Dex said.  
‘Yes, army boy, good point,’ the krogan acknowledged with world-weary resignation. ‘Someone gets killed on Tuchanka - who cares? Her own damn fault for going there in the first place. And everyone knows krogan are all violent liars, so obviously no-one’s going to listen to us.’  
‘And the school?’  
‘That was the end for it,’ Krondesh told the Finch. ‘There wasn’t anyone who could step in to take Kelia’s place. A few of us tried, but it didn’t work. In the end the group just drifted apart. Some of us kept reading and working because we liked it, but we didn’t expect to go any further. Then I got roped into my brother’s business with Battlemaster Alrateg, that all went sour, and that was that.’ The krogan shrugged. ‘Life sucks and then you die.’  
Whilst Krondesh spoke, Dex was observing him. The krogan was being surprisingly voluble, and he hadn't taken his eyes off of the Finch the whole time. Dex wondered what was going on. Why was the krogan being this chatty? Was he just that happy at being let loose in a room full of books? That was possible, Dex supposed, but he wasn't sure that it was the answer.  
'And then you ended up on Omega,' the Finch said, regarding the krogan.  
'Yeah.' Krondesh said. 'And so did you.'  
Just at that moment, the doorbell rang.  
The Finch blinked. 'That will be the delivery. Both of you - get out of sight!'  
Dex and Krondesh moved over to far side of the living room. Where they were stood was out of sight from the front door. The Finch went over to the door. Dex saw her back disappear as she stepped into the small vestibule between it and the outside.  
He heard her speaking to someone outside, and he heard the familiar chimes of an omnitool payment taking place. A moment later, he heard doors closing. She returning carrying several boxes. Dex's stomach growled as he smelt the distinct scent of turian food.  
The Finch walked over. 'One for you,' she told Krondesh, handing him a box. 'And one for you.' She handed the other to Dex. 'Now I need to finish sorting out mine.'  
She walked back over to the kitchen area.  
'Food,' the krogan said. 'Don't know about you, but I'm hungry.' He took his box and walked over to one of the sofas. A moment later, there was a creak and a rattle as the krogan dumped himself down onto it. There was a rustle as he started digging into his takeaway box.  
A question occurred to Dex. He trailed after the Finch, carrying his box.  
She was going back to her cooking. She stirred something in one of the pans, more of that dubious mass of alien biomatter that she apparently considered food. Dex could smell it, and he had no idea what to compare the scent to.  
She glanced up. 'Hello again,' she said.  
Dex found himself staring.  
She frowned. 'Is something the matter?'  
'Uh, are you ... ill?'  
'What do you mean?'  
'Your forehead,' he said. 'It's glistening.'  
It was. The Finch's face was shining in the light.  
'Oh, that.' She reached up and idly wiped her brow. 'Yeah, it's hot over the pans. It made me sweat a bit.'  
'That's ... actually real?' Dex couldn't help the shudder that rippled through him. He had heard that human skin exuded oily salty fluids when they were too hot, but he'd never credited the stories. People came out with all sorts of crap about alien biology.  
She looked puzzled. 'Yes. Why do you ask?'  
'It sounds really painful,' he said.  
She blinked. 'Painful? No, it isn't.'  
'Really?'  
'You haven't met many humans, have you?'  
Dex shook his head. 'Hardly any, before I wound up here.' He tried not to stare at the oily gleam, and he failed. 'It looks really slimy.'  
The Finch's face contorted itself into an expression he couldn't read.  
'Sorry,' Dex said. 'I know that was probably the wrong thing to say.'  
Her face reverted somewhat to its usual configuration. She sighed and shook her head. 'I suppose from your point of view you're stuck in a room with an alien slime monster,' she said. 'And a mammalian one at that.'  
Dex said nothing.  
She turned back to her cooking. 'I told you about the first real alien I ever saw. During Shanxi. One of you, of course. At first when it started, everyone thought it was some sort of joke. Like April Fools Day, or something. Then we realised this was real - and everything on Earth went nuts. No-one had any idea what to make of any of this.' She glanced back at Dex. 'Frankly, for a long time, a lot of us thought you were going to be the enemy.'  
Dex felt his mandibles move. He didn't say anything, but a lot of turians had felt the same about humanity.  
Her eyes flicked down; she'd seen that mandible movement. She said, 'And now I've got one stood in my kitchen.'  
Awkward.  
'So,' he said, trying to keep moving past a growing sense of discomfiture, 'how do we look to you?'  
She cocked her head slightly to the side, considering the question. After a long pause, she said, 'Slightly fake.'  
Dex blinked. 'What?'  
She sighed. 'It's a bit difficult for me. To some extent I've grown up with all of this. But I've talked to some really old relatives. My great-great-grandfather died in 2161. He was one hundred and forty five. That meant he was born in 2016. He was the one who used to tell me stories about mobile phones.' She smiled slightly, but the look in her eyes seemed more sad then happy. Dex put the discrepancy down to his difficulties in reading human faces. He supposed he'd better not comment on it. She said, 'He told me when he was a kid, everyone expected aliens to be weird. I mean like radially-symmetric tentacled floating gas-bags. Or weirdo things like a sort of talking stromatolite.'  
'What's a stromatolite?'  
'Something you find on Earth in places,' she said. 'They're thought to be a survivor from the very first types of life. But instead of space squid or balls of tentacles, we have you.'  
'You're probably thinking of the hanar,' Dex said.  
'Granted they're a bit more alien,' she agreed. 'Of course, the modern theory is that we're seeing a constraint imposed by parallel evolution. The argument is that there are only so many viable body plans for a tool-using intelligence. You need some sort of decent-sized brain. You need limbs to move around on, and other limbs to handle tools with. But you can't have too many limbs because the more you add, the more you impose on the brain's coordination capacity. Realistically you need binocular vision, so that sticks the eyes somewhere on the front of your head. And so on. So natural selection pushes us all toward a semi-consistent bodyplan. We all wind up bipedal, with bilateral symmetry and two main limb-pairs. Granted you have some exceptions like the hanar and those ancient - what where they called? - rachni and so forth, but they're rare.'  
'There's also the prothean hypothesis,' Dex said. He was careful not to express any opinion on said hypothesis himself. He didn't know the full details, but he did know that it had started a lot of arguments.  
She nodded. 'There is. But that's ... controversial. I mean, there is some genetic evidence that yes, the protheans did things with the hanar and the asari. And the hanar's technological path probably started somewhere outside - it's a bit difficult for sea-dwellers to discover fire! But there's no evidence that the protheans did anything with us. Apparently they were just being space voyeurs, over from their base on Mars.'  
Dex snorted at that.  
She continued, 'I'm not aware of any suggestion that they did anything with you, or the salarians. I don't think there's any research on the krogan or the quarians.'  
'It's a bit difficult to do science on Tuchanka,' Dex observed.  
She nodded. 'There is that problem, yes. But barring some unexpected development, the best idea we have is independent parallel development across biospheres. Anyway, what I'm taking the long way round to saying is ... actually, you look a lot more like us than we expected.'  
'And you,' Dex said, 'talk like a scientist, not a recruitment agent.'  
The Finch reached down to the hob and clicked a dial off. 'What, you only just worked that out?' She sounded genuinely surprised.  
'What, I should have known?'  
She pointed at the book that Krondesh had produced earlier. It was still lying on the side of the countertop. 'That book the krogan confronted me with earlier? I take it you didn't realise it was copy of my doctoral thesis?'  
Dex stared at the alien characters on the front. 'Oh,' he said.  
'Yes,' she agreed. 'Oh.'  
'Then...' Dex waved his arms confusedly. 'What are you doing here?'  
'I could ask you the same question,' she said. 'You're clearly ex-military.'  
'I'm a turian,' Dex said. 'You do realise that describes probably about ninety-five percent of our adult population?'  
'I can't be sure,' she said, ignoring him, 'but I strongly suspect you're some sort of special forces type.'  
At that moment, from across the lounge, the krogan weighed. 'He's from the Engineering Corps in the Armiger Legion,' Krondesh announced, raising his voice.  
'You have good ears,' the Finch said with a hint of acid.  
'Damn right, mammal!' With that, Krondesh returned to chomping down on his meal.  
The Finch snorted with amusement. 'Doesn't look like you're going to get to keep your secrets.'  
'No,' Dex sighed. 'Apparently not.'  
'So ... ? Why are you here?'  
Even with Krondesh knowing the details, Dex was still reticent. Also, he noted that the krogan hadn't told the Finch precisely why he'd left the turian armed forces. Interesting that Kronesh had chosen to hold that bit back. Apparently the krogan was happy to mildly-embarrass him, but not to seriously inconvenience him.  
'I left under a cloud,' he said. 'I suppose that's pretty obvious.'  
She nodded. 'I'd figured that much out based on our conversation the other day.'  
'Let's just say I was disobedient,' Dex said. 'In a way that saved lives rather than cost them - but that wouldn't get you anywhere under Hierarchy law.'  
She nodded. 'I suppose not, now. Obedience is everything for you, isn't it? I find it fascinating how my own people fall over ourselves to forget that other f-word when we discuss your society.'  
Dex was puzzled. 'Which f-word?' he asked.  
'Never mind,' she said. 'Not important. Not here anyway.' She grimaced. 'And it's not like we don't have enough homegrown f-holes of our own, anyway.'  
Dex felt that he was missing something basic underlying this conversation. That was a common problem with conversing with aliens: a lack of shared cultural grammar could lead to odd gaps and moments of awkwardness.  
None of this was bringing him any closer to what he needed to know, though.  
'You've evaded the question several times,' he said. 'Who are you?'  
She sighed. Glancing down at the hob, she apparently decided that whatever she was doing was finished. She reached down and tapped the hob off.  
She looked back up. 'I'm not actually called the Finch,' she said, 'though I think you already worked that out.'  
He nodded. With a conscious effort, he kept his mandibles still.  
'My name is Barbara Davoy - Dr. Barbara Davoy.' She patted the book, still sat on the countertop. 'Formerly of Earth, as you might have guessed.'  
'That's still not very specific. A planet is a big place.'  
'If I told you I used to live in Exeter in south-west England, and before that I lived in London, it wouldn't mean anything, would it?'  
'London's a city, isn't it?' Dex had heard the name somewhere, on some news broadcast or something. He had a vague feeling that it was an urban area of some description.  
Her mouth quirked. One of those smiles, he realised. 'Well done,' she said. 'Yes, it's a city. So is Exeter, for that matter, though you wouldn't have heard of that one.'  
'You're still evading,' he said.  
She shrugged. 'A lifetime habit. Somehow I think you might have a similar one.'  
That was true, Dex noted with a feeling of awkwardness. He tried a different tack. 'Why the Finch?'  
'Most of my current clients are turians,' she said. 'A finch is a type of terrestrial bird. I needed a pseudonym and this one amused me.'  
Dex knew intellectually that the bird species weren't the dominant ones on Earth. This was rather weird. How could something claim the apex niche in a planet's ecosystem if it was restricted only to two dimensions?  
'What's a human scientist doing working as a dodgy recruitment agent on Omega?' he asked, repeating himself.  
'Sometimes things don't work out the way you expected,' she said, 'and you have to start again.'  
'More evasion.'  
'Yes,' she agreed.  
A shadow fell on the countertop next to them. Dex felt a looming presence behind them. With remarkably quiet movements, the krogan had returned.  
'You did a lot of work on image analysis,' the krogan rumbled. 'And VI systems. Enough to get a doctorate out of it. And Turing - I've heard that name. He was something to do with computer science on Earth, wasn't he?'  
The Finch's face was expressionless.  
'I'm going to take a guess,' the krogan said. 'You were in AI research, weren't you?'  
The Finch winced. 'I see I have no secrets from you,' she said to Krondesh. She sighed. 'Since you've guessed part of the sordid story - no. Or at least, not deliberately.'  
'Not deliberately?' Krondesh's inflection suggested that he didn't believe her.  
'I was actually an astronomer originally,' she said. 'I was involved in the Occulus survey.'  
'That was that big interferometer project, isn't it?' Krondesh said. ‘A huge bungle, so I heard. Millions of credits wasted and lots of careers ended.’  
Once more Dex felt a moment of disorientation. He was realising that it was past time to ditch all the stereotypes, but there were still moments when the existence of a well-informed krogan surprised him.  
'Yes,' she said. 'Occulus was a galaxy-wide array. Thousand of multiple receivers spread across the galaxy, linked together through the mass relays. The hope was that we could create an interferometer with an effective dish size as big as the galactic disk itself. I mean, think what you could do with a telescope that big!' For a moment her face was full of enthusiasm.  
'Light lag,' Krondesh said.  
She looked annoyed for a moment. Then she said, 'Yes. Light lag. That was what killed it off, of course. We thought we could get around that problem by using lots of smaller, local sub-arrays and interpolating across the boundary regions. But it turned out that doing that loses too much data.'  
'Uh, the dextro's got a bit lost here,' Dex said. ' "Light lag"?'  
Krondesh rolled his eyes.  
The Finch said, 'The galactic disk is roughly one hundred thousand light years across - in round numbers. So when a photon starts at one side of it, it'll be a tenth of a million years before it gets to the other side. An interferometer is made of a lot of little telescopes - you combine the signals and do some horrible maths to them. The point is, it can "fake" a single very big telescope. The bigger the faked telescope, the better.'  
A bit of understanding began to dawn. 'No-one could ever build a telescope as big as the galaxy itself,' Dex said.  
'Quite,' she agreed. 'But we could possibly build an interferometer to fake a galaxy-sized telescope. So back in the early 60s, that's exactly what an Earth-based research consortium tried doing. I was at graduate school at the time, and my supervisor was heavily involved. So guess what my PhD project related to?'  
Dex felt his mandibles flex. 'It didn't work?'  
'We got all the base stations set up,' she said. 'That was fine. We were able to get them to talk to a central server, via the comm bouys. That was fine. We could do the maths. All the VIs worked. But the galaxy was still a hundred thousand light years across. So we were still dealing with a hundred millennia of light-lag. So yes, we had a system which in principle had an incredible resolution and an eye-watering sensitivity ... but to take a single spectrum of one object, you had to run it for a hundred thousand years. Good luck getting research funding for that long. Because we certainly couldn't.'  
'Career-ending,' Krondesh noted.  
'Yes,' the Finch agreed. 'One single basic mistake sat underneath a huge project. My supervisor's reputation was ruined. My own work is perfectly valid, but I was tarred with the same brush. Guilt by association.'  
'How did that mistake even get made?' Dex asked.  
'I can see you're a soldier, not an academic,' she said. 'The answer is money plus careerism. My doctoral supervisor had complete control over the departmental budget. And he was an arrogant man who reacted poorly to any disagreement. Too much disagreement and the flow of money might stop. People learnt early on not to bring him too many problems. Most of them were able to move on from the project before the flaws became overt. I arrived during the last phase of it, so unfortunately, I was stuck on ground zero when it all unravelled.'  
'Your work was on data processing?' Krondesh asked.  
She nodded. 'The array generated a huge volume of data, most of it junk. My work was on filtering out as much of the junk as possible.'  
'You used specialist VIs to do that?' Krondesh said.  
She nodded. 'Yes. Because of the complexity, some of them became quite advanced.'  
'AIs?'  
She shook her head. 'Nothing that crossed that line, no. But we did kind of toe up against it.'  
'Toe?' Dex blinked. 'Oh, wait, those are those horrible mutant fingers you have on your feet, aren't they?'  
She fixed him with a glare. 'I'm beginning to get the impression this turian doesn't like us very much.'  
'I wouldn't worry, mammal,' Krondesh said. 'Turians don't like anyone. Except themselves. I'm sure it's nothing personal.'  
Dex decided not to make any further comments on alien anatomy. However bizarre it might be, it was clearly too much trouble. And to think, the Finch seemed to believe that their anatomy wasn't bizarre enough!  
‘Anyway I couldn’t find a job,' the Finch said, ‘I put the thesis in and survived the viva examination, but that was the end of the line. No-one wanted to hire Dr. Beaumann’s former student. My work was in legal limbo - the data belonged to the Occulus Consortium, not me, and the consortium was being litigated at. Debts and all of that, you know. So half my work couldn’t even get published - I couldn’t get the permissions to use Occulus intellectual property!’  
‘No papers,’ Krondesh noted. ‘No references. No hope?’  
She nodded. ‘Basically, yes. I had to give up on the world of science. After I got out from academia I went into commercial research. That was a mixed bag. I got hired to work on one project - medical imaging systems for hospitals. Then that was closed down and I found myself transferred onto a new one, based on Noveria.'  
'That's the human Illium, isn't it?' Krondesh said.  
The Finch winced. 'Apparently the Alliance wanted to fanboy the asari's ball of mud and corruption. So yes, we have our own two-bit imitator. Minus the slave markets, thank goodness.'  
'Give it a few years,' Krondesh said. 'I'm sure your Alliance won't want to be left out of a lucrative business.'  
'I suspect you might be right,' she agreed. 'Anyway I found myself working on a dodgy project. It turned out it was VIs for some sort of military application.'  
'Some sort of military application?'  
'There were a lot of odd things there,' she said. 'People were very close-lipped about what the project was actually for. That made making progress quite difficult. We were always up against an invisible, movable bar. Also it made me suspicious.'  
'Were you right to be suspicious?'  
She shrugged. 'People on the project started disappearing. At first we just thought there'd been a few accidents - Noveria can be a bit dangerous sometimes. Then five people on my team vanished overnight.'  
'Any idea what happened to them?'  
'The day before I'd overheard them talking in the lounge area,' the Finch said. 'Cathy was saying something about an Alliance facility on the Moon and a damaged VI. There'd been some sort of attack, or something. They were saying something about illegal modifications. They all seemed very worried. And the next day, they were gone. And the place was crawling with security types - heavily armed security types. I took that as a hint. When I went to lunch, I snuck out of the building and went straight to the spaceport. I bought my way onto the next ship to Omega.'  
'Why Omega?' Krondesh asked.  
She waved a hand. 'No passport checks, so no paper trail. So I couldn't be traced. Originally it was going to be the first step on the way back to Earth. I was kind of missing the green hills of home, you know? But when I looked up the news on the extranet, there were all these rumours circulating about a rogue AI at an Alliance base on Earth's Moon. Apparently some spec ops team had been sent in to hush it up, or something. Given all the people vanishing from my former work...' She shrugged. 'I looked a few of them up and guess what?'  
'They'd all turned up dead?' Dex asked.  
She nodded. 'Plausibly-deniable demises. Bodies found at the bottom of Noverian ravines, drug overdoses, that sort of thing. Individually each one would be a sad accident, but put together? A pattern was emerging. I'd disappeared of my own accord. And I figured I'd better stay disappeared.'  
'Sounds wise,' Krondesh agreed.  
'As to how I got into recruitment,' she said, 'I needed a way to make money while I was here. Not having a job on Omega isn’t a viable option. A civilised society has a welfare net, so there’s a limit to how far you can fall. Here? When you go down, you go all the way.’  
Dex found himself nodding.  
She was continuing, ‘Anyway I took a job as an analyst with one of the station's big employment agencies. It wouldn’t be my first choice normally but like I said, I needed a job. I was only there three months before the place went bust, but I was busy for those three months. When the partners ran out of money and did a runner off-station, I lifted a copy of the client and customer lists.'  
'Oh,' Dex said. ‘That was smart.’  
‘'Oh indeed,’ she nodded. ‘It took me a while, but I was finally starting to get a clue about life. The lists gave me what I needed to go into business myself. See who has a vacancy, see who has skills that match. Make some calls. Not particularly difficult. In the process various people started owing me favours. I moved into the more discreet markets as there was less competition there.'  
'And that's how you got tangled in Kat's web,' Dex said.  
The Finch sighed. 'That's my exciting uplifting life story for you. My academic career was killed off by a maniac supervisor's mistakes. My corporate career nearly got me murdered. And my Omegan career nearly got me fed to the Collectors.'  
'With luck like that,' Krondesh said, 'you could almost be a krogan.'  
'From him,' Dex put in, 'that's almost a compliment.'  
'Talking of Kat,' Krondesh said, 'shouldn't we be doing something with all that data we risked our lives to steal?'  
The Finch nodded. 'My plan is to load it all onto my system in here. That way it can be analysed in depth overnight. We can have a look at the results in the morning.'  
'It is quite late, isn't it?' Dex said. He realised he was feeling tired. This had been a long and demanding day.  
Krondesh was looking at the Finch. 'I see you have a copy of Matriarch Dilinaga's "Theses and contradictions",' he said.  
She blinked. 'Yes. I have a passing interest in alien philosophy.'  
'Can I borrow it?' The krogan looked desperate and eager at the same time. There was restrained nervousness in his voice.  
Dex had no idea what the significance of the book was, but it was clear that Krondesh wanted it badly. And the krogan evidently wasn't sure that he'd be allowed access to it.  
The Finch considered the question. 'Okay,' she said.  
'Really?' Krondesh's voice cracked a little.  
She looked uncertain, apparently not quite sure what to make of this. 'Yes,' she said.  
'You're now my favourite human,' Krondesh informed her. 'Just so you know.' With that, the krogan turned around and strode back over to the bookshelves. He was almost running. Dex actually felt the thuds as Krondesh's boots hit the floor.  
The Finch looked at Dex. 'How long does it take to get used to him?'  
'Don't ask me. I only met him a couple of days ago.'  
The Finch shrugged. ‘Okay. I’ll have my dinner, then I’ll get the data loaded into the system. Overnight should be enough for decoding and some decent correlation analysis. By morning tomorrow we should have all the dirt we’ll ever need on Kat and her friends.’ She looked at Dex. ‘Lucky for you, we have spare rooms here.’ She pointed toward the upper mezzanine section of the apartment. ‘Mine’s the big one at the end. You and the krogan can pick which one you like out of the other two.’  
‘Okay,’ Dex said. Dinner and then bed was seeming like a good plan. He was feeling increasingly tired. ‘In that case I’m going to go and bother my takeaway. After that, sleep, I think.’  
‘Okay,’ the Finch said. From somewhere she had produced a plate and some cutlery and she was busy serving her own dinner.  
Without further discussion, Dex turned and walked back to the seating area.


	13. Analyses and Accusations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A turian has breakfast. A krogan gets dressed. A human is surprised by a display of empathy. Krondesh the literate krogan comes into his own. Hypotheses are confirmed and plans revealed. A tentative plan is arrived at. Then a false accusation is made…

'How long?' Dex asked.  
'We're nearly there,' the Finch said.  
It was the next morning, at least on the Finch's typical day-night cycle. Dex's first question on getting up had been to find out how the data was going.  
The Finch was stood over her terminal, eyeing a progress bar. 'A few more minutes,' she said. 'Actually, maybe more like half an hour.'  
Dex sighed. 'I'll get breakfast, then.'  
'Probably a good idea,' she agreed.  
Breakfast consisted of the portion of last night's takeaway that he hadn't got to. He'd deposited the box in the fridge, knowing that he'd need it in the morning. The leftovers weren't hugely appetising, but it was better than going hungry. He demolished the improvised breakfast with marginal enthusiasm and washed it down with a big glass of water. Unappealing as it may have been, the food did make Dex feel more alive.  
The Finch was still fussing over her terminal.  
Upstairs a muffled groan and the thump of big feet on the floor revealed that the krogan was now awake. The mezzanine floor wasn't quite up to the load imposed by an adult krogan. Krondesh's morning activities were consequently accompanied by much rattling and banging.  
The Finch was staring. 'What is he doing up there?'  
'Getting dressed, I think,' Dex said.  
She looked back at Dex. 'Has he actually been out of that armour since yesterday?'  
'I assume overnight,' Dex said. 'But he's a bit short of changes of clothes right now.'  
'Dare I ask?'  
'His other pants were in the skycar. The one that Kat blew up, I mean.'  
An unreadable alien expression washed over the Finch's face. 'Oh God. A krogan with no pants. In my house. I must have murdered someone in a past life.' She sighed. 'I'm sure the fab could run something off. Perhaps I should offer.'  
Dex felt a moment of unease. 'I ... wouldn't,' he said.  
'Why not?' She frowned.  
'I'd wait for him to ask,' Dex said as the thought crystallised. He lowered his voice. 'Krogan can be ... well, this sounds strange, but the one upstairs has a few issues.'  
'I'd never have guessed,' the Finch said with sarcasm. 'All that exploding batarians with Warp balls. And shotgunning anything that moves.'  
'No, that's just business as usual for krogan,' Dex said. 'Krondesh is - well, to be honest, underneath the bluster he's actually a bit insecure. He's not had the happiest of lives.'  
'Have any of us?'  
'What I'm saying is, he can get a bit touchy when he thinks he's being intruded on. And he does seem to spend his days in a state of mild paranoia.'  
'Mild paranoia?'  
'I'm starting to think it's not that unreasonable for the krogan,' Dex said. 'There are a lot of people who are out to get them. From their point of view, expecting a knife in the back probably isn't that excessive. If wandering around in full armour all day makes him feel happier, probably best just to let him get on with it.'  
The Finch was staring. 'Of all the things,' she said. 'I never thought I'd see a turian empathising with a krogan.'  
A few moments later, a door upstairs hissed open. Then there was the sound of heavy footsteps clanging on the stairs. A few moments later, they were joined by a krogan. Just as Dex had suspected, Krondesh was back in his armour, albeit with the helmet off. Dex noticed some fresh scuffs and scratches on the krogan's purple plates, apparently legacies of the previous day's excitement.  
'That was nice,' Krondesh said. 'Sleeping in a bed, I mean. Not some grotty alley. Or a shitty doss house somewhere.'  
The Finch blinked. 'You ... don't normally?'  
Krondesh sighed. 'Mammal, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm not exactly made of money. Not all of us can afford mansions, you know.'  
'This isn't a...'  
'It is from where I'm stood,' Krondesh said.  
Dex frowned, mandibles flexing. 'What do you do? Usually, I mean?'  
Krondesh shrugged, shoulder plates clinking. 'If I have the credits I rent a hammock in one of the Warrens doss houses. There's several of them, and three of them even have bathrooms.'  
'Is being a krogan ever a problem?' Dex asked.  
'Not in the Lower Warrens,' Krondesh said. 'People need your credits too much to argue. Watching a salarian's greed conflict with his racism is quite entertaining.'  
The Finch did not look impressed. 'Isn't that also a rather racist comment?'  
'Given that they're guilty of genocide, I figure they've earnt it.'  
The Finch looked like she was about to say something. Then she apparently thought better of it. 'I shouldn't pursue this line of conversation and further, should I?'  
'Probably not,' Krondesh asgreed. 'If you were going to say, "But you're not extinct so it's not genocide" - don't. I'd also say come back in a century or two.' He shrugged. 'We're not gone quite yet, but my people have more past then future.'  
'Sometimes,' the Finch said, 'I really think we should have just left Charon to its own devices. This galaxy is a fucking mess.'  
Dex felt a change of subject was needed. 'So what do you do?' he said. 'When you can't afford one of the, uh, doss houses?'  
Krondesh sighed. 'What do you think, army boy? I sleep on the streets. Ideally I want a blind alley with something warm at the end of it. A pipe, maybe, or an air con unit.'  
'Something warm?' The Finch looked puzzled.  
'I'm a reptile,' Krondesh said, in the voice of someone pointing out the obvious. 'Not all of us have warm, self-heating blood, you know. 

And the Lower Warrens tend to be cold.'  
Dex said, 'The maintenance problems. Bust heating systems, damaged insulation in the outer shell.'  
'Yeah,' Krondesh said. 'Not a nice place to live.'  
'And if you can't find anything warm...?' the Finch asked.  
Krondesh shrugged. 'In that case I don't sleep. You keep walking till you find somewhere warm enough. Cold makes us sleepy - very, very sleepy. In theory the morning heat of dawn wakes us up. But of course dawn never comes here. You occasionally find comatose krogan in Omegan alleys. It's not rude to give them a kick - they might not wake up otherwise!'  
The Finch looked appalled. She swallowed. After a moment, she said, 'It's quite the comment on life in this shithole that being kicked in your sleep could count as a favour!'  
'I think I might leave kicking krogan to someone else,' Dex said.  
'Yeah, turians are all bastards like that,' Krondesh said.  
'I left myself open to that, didn't I?'  
'Yes you did, army boy.' To the Finch, he said, 'Count yourself lucky. Your crazy exotherm metabolism means that won't happen to you.'  
'Actually we do get hypothermia,' the Finch said. 'And even die from it.'  
Dex boggled. Given how chilly this apartment was, he dreaded to think how cold it would have to be to kill a human. Why, that might actually imply temperatures below the freezing point!  
'And we starve to death a lot faster than you would,' she added. 'Exothermic metabolisms need a lot of food to keep them running.'  
'Don't you hibernate or something?' Krondesh asked.  
'No, that's bears. We're technically a tropical animal, so we don't do that. You don't really get winter in the tropics. Or at least not in the way you do in the temperate latitudes.'  
Krondesh shook his head. 'Aliens and their weird bodies. I don't know.'  
'Hey, we're perfectly normal!' the Finch protested. 'It's the rest of you that are the oddballs.'  
'This is a very morbid conversation,' Dex said. 'How is the data coming along?'  
'Let me have a look.' The Finch turned and looked down at her console. 'Oh. We're almost there. In fact -'  
Something started beeping.  
'Gotcha,' she said.  
'Are we in?' Krondesh asked.  
The Finch tapped some keys. Documents and files spilled over one of the holographic screens. 'Oh,' she said, as she scanned a couple of the files. 'It's all in asari. Damn.'  
The krogan sighed. 'Just as well you've got me, then, isn't it? Out of the way, mammal.'  
The Finch stepped to one side. Krondesh parked himself in front of her console. He looked at her office chair, then shook his head. 'No. Won't sit on that. It looks too spindly for my magnificent bulk.'  
The Finch looked scandalised, but she said nothing.  
The krogan turned his attention to the screens. He started scanning through the text, poring over diagrams and occasionally tapping something with a finger. He kept making little noises, occasional mutterings and grunts.  
'Well?' Dex asked after a time.  
'Yeah,' Krondesh said. 'We've got dirt.'  
'Anything in particular?' the Finch asked.  
Krondesh pointed at one open file. 'Take this,' he said. 'Kat's record keeping is impeccable. She's got the money for every prisoner she sold. She's even worked out a money-to-bodyweight ratio!'  
'What?' Dex boggled. That was bad even by Kat's greedy standards.  
'Seriously, that's how she's got into selling turians and krogan,' Krondesh said. 'She reckons she gets the highest return per kilo of body mass for us. And it's all here. Dates, times, numbers ... everything.'  
He poked at the haptic field. A new file flickered onto the screen.  
'This is an interesting one,' he said. 'It's the bill of sale. For the stuff she's spiking the drugs with at the Golden Syringe. A paralytic agent, apparently.'  
'She's spiking all of them?' the Finch asked.  
'No,' Krondesh said. 'If everyone who went there vanished, people would stop going. No, her list of victims is here.' He pulled up another file. 'She keeps a weekly billing spreadsheet. It seems when a client falls behind on their payments, she moves them onto the red list here. Six weeks in a row in arrears and she sells you to the Collectors.'  
The Finch blinked. 'Why six weeks?'  
'Profit margins,' Krondesh said. He called up another file. 'See this one? Basically the problem is, the Collectors don't give her credits. They give her tech. Only sometimes, the tech can't be sold. Margins are high but variable. So to ensure profitability, she has to keep up a high rate of sales.'  
'A devil's advocate question,' the Finch said. 'Could we be accused of faking this data?'  
Krondesh shook his head. 'No. Not credibly. She records the names   
of all her victims and the dates of sale. That makes fact-checking this stuff very, very easy.'  
Dex felt a growing sense of triumph. 'We've got her,' he said. 'We've actually got her!'  
'Wait,' the Finch said. 'What about Karrean?'  
'Oh yeah, him.' Krondesh pointed at another file. 'Here he is. This is a copy of his agreement with Kat - apparently they don't trust each other, so they put it in writing.'  
Dex snorted. 'What does it say?'  
'It says - oh, juicy!' The krogan sounded excited. He leaned forward.  
'Don't keep us in suspense,' the Finch said.  
'It lists their whole plan,' Krondesh said. 'Karrean helps Kat. In return she helps him stage a coup against Aria. When he's installed as President For Life or whatever ... oh, nasty.'  
'Nasty?'  
'He wants to annex the station to the Batarian Hegemony,' Krondesh said. 'He seems to think the Archon might pardon him if he does that.'  
'I could see that plan going wrong,' the Finch said.  
'That's putting it lightly,' Krondesh agreed. 'There are enough aliens of all species here that doing that would probably start a war.'  
'This station has the biggest economy in the Terminus Systems,' Dex noted. 'The Citadel would never let the Hegemony take it. That would completely change the balance of power.'  
'Anyway,' Krondesh said, 'looks like our guess was right. Once Karrean takes over, he installs Kat as his second-in-command. In return for his aid with killing Aria, she's allowed to do what she wants with the Collectors. So that's Kat's angle - a get-rich-quick scheme.'  
'But what about us?' Dex said. 'How did we get dragged into this? Why did she set us on Karrean?'  
Krondesh poked through the documents. 'Let's see. Is there anything obvious? Not that, not this, not ... Oh, hello, what are you?' His eyes were intent.  
'What is it?' the Finch asked.  
'An archived email,' Krondesh said. 'Let me quote it. "It appears we have two loose ends. My agents dealt with the krogan transport team - except one. Apparently he doesn't have an address, so they couldn't visit him at home. Also one of the turians on my security teams is ex-army. He recognised the HMWSG shot. I don't think he's talked to the krogan, but what if there's a chance meeting?" '  
Dex sighed. 'Oh Kat, you silly asari. She was worried we might bump into each other in a corridor and randomly start talking guns - so she put us both in a room together? Bad move.'  
'Karrean replied to her,' Krondesh said. 'This is worth hearing. "I have a suggestion. There's a saying on Khar'Shan - the frugal master binds two slaves with one chain. You need to clean up both loose ends. Why not clean them up together?"  
'A day later, Kat replied to him. She said, "That's risky. If I put them together, they might talk."  
'He replied to that. "Then make sure they die quickly. Make it a redundant plot. Use several means to kill them. If one of them fails, there are backups." '  
He kept scanning down the documents.  
'So they're definitely working together,' Dex said, 'and there really was no accident in anything that happened to us.'  
'What else?' the Finch asked.  
'Oh this just gets better and better,' Krondesh said. 'Yes, they were colluding on the "assassinate Karrean" plan. In fact it was his idea. Either the bomb in the skycar would kill us. Or the bomb in the tunnel. Or the missing airlock. Or Karrean's own bodyguards.  
'And then there's a really sneaky bit. Kat was to go to Aria with the failed hit. She was to tell Aria that she had evidence that Karrean was doing deals with Collectors, and she'd tried to stop him. But he'd killed her agents.'  
'Oh shit,' Dex said.  
'She was trying to ingratiate herself with Aria,' the Finch said.  
Krondesh nodded. 'Yes. Kat would get into Aria's inner circle this way. She inserts her own people into Afterlife. Then, when Aria goes to town on Karrean, Kat is at her side. And Kat is then able to sneak a knife into Aria's back.'  
'Oh crap,' Dex said. 'We were the opening act in their next coup plot.'  
'You said you saw footage of sales to the Collectors,' the Finch said.  
Krondesh nodded. 'Yes. Says here that Karrean took the recordings himself and gave them to Kat.'  
'That story about discontented people in his inner circle,' Dex said. 'That was complete crap, then?'  
Krondesh nodded. 'Totally. A plausible lie, but still a lie.'  
Dex nodded. 'Figures, I guess.'  
'Is there anything about me?' the Finch asked.  
Krondesh looked closely at the screen, scrolling down through a file. 'There is, mammal,' he said. 'But it's not very nice.'  
The Finch sighed. 'I didn't think that it would be. Tell me anyway.'  
'Okay,' Krondesh said. 'Kat has sent Karrean a message. She says, and I quote, "There is a link between the turian and the krogan. That link is a human job-whore who works out of the Warrens." '  
'Job-whore?' The Finch blinked. 'Strictly, "job-pimp" would be a better description. I'm not selling myself.'  
Krondesh peered at her. 'I can see that you're an ex-academic,' he noted. 'You're arguing over definitions, not style.'  
'Is that all there is?' she asked.  
The krogan shook his head. He looked back at the files. 'There's more. Karrean has a whole message speculation about whether you've slept with us. Filthy batarian. Then he notes that they can use you to find us.'  
The Finch nodded slowly. 'That fits together.'  
'Lastly. he recommends disposing you as well. Just in case we've told you anything. But he says they probably won't be able to get you at the same time as us.'  
'And Kat suggests selling - selling me to the Collectors?' The Finch's eyes were haunted again. Dex noted she had hugged her shoulders in. She looked a little frightened.  
'Yes,' Krondesh said.  
The Finch swallowed, then made a visible effort to compose herself. 'Well,' she said. 'I'm glad we have the situation clarified. And it seems we all have a definite interest in taking these two down.'  
'So,' Dex said, 'we go to T'Loak, I guess.'  
'How do we do this?' Krondesh asked. 'Just march up to Afterlife and ask for an audience?'  
A feeling of unease stirred inside Dex's gut. That was an excellent question. How did they do this? He'd never needed to make contact with T'Loak's organisation before.  
The Finch was shaking her head. 'No. I reckon we'd be better off sending a message first. Show them some of our evidence, not all of it. Enough to make clear we're not lunatics or anything. Then set up an in-person meeting. It might take a bit longer - but if we just walk down there, Kat's people might see us.'  
'Shit,' Dex said. 'That's a good point. And they won't just let us go and talk to her, will they?'  
'Also,' Krondesh said, 'we're going to have to think about how we angle this. We're pissed at Kat because she tried to kill us. But T'Loak won't care about that.'  
The Finch scowled and crossed her arms, but said nothing.  
Krondesh continued, 'But, I reckon she'll be angry about the Collector deals. And the coup plot and the bombings. So those should get her interested.'  
'Do we have definite proof that Kat bombed the transit tube?' Dex asked.  
Krondesh pointed at a file on the holographic display. 'Right here. She ordered had it fabbed from a specification from Karrean.'  
'Good.'  
'Good?' the krogan said. 'How is that good?'  
'Because T'Loak will care about damage to the station itself,' Dex said. 'Particularly when that breaks the pressure hull. And that bomb popped the tube properly.'  
The Finch nodded. 'Makes sense,' she said. 'Fuck with the station's pressure vessels too much and that could kill all of us. And Aria's business needs customers if it's to turn a profit. We can't consume when we're dead.'  
'Okay,' Dex said. 'So we call someone at her organisation and explain the situation. We give them a bit of information and then ...' He paused. What then?  
He realised he had no idea.  
Krondesh was watching him. 'And then?' the krogan asked.  
'Uh,' Dex said, feeling weird.  
The krogan sighed. 'You hadn't thought that far ahead, had you, army boy?'  
Dex was silent. He couldn't think of anything to say.  
The krogan said, 'You're good at tactics but you have no sense of strategy, do you? When everything went wrong for you in the army...' the krogan glanced briefly at the Finch, then apparently thought twice about what he was going to say '...you reacted to the situation, but you didn't know what to do once it ended, did you? And that's how you wound up here, on Omega.'  
Dex felt his mandibles twitch. He didn't trust himself to speak. He glanced to one side. The Finch looked fascinated. She had leaned forward slightly and her pupils were bigger than normal.  
Krondesh said, 'You've reacted to each situation pretty well, but you don't know where to go from here, do you?'  
Dex realised he had no words.  
‘Well,’ the Finch said, stepping in, ‘this is all very interesting, but it’s not moving us forward. I think the idea of sending a message and requesting a meeting is the way to proceed.’  
‘The question,’ Krondesh said, ‘is what do we want T’Loak’s people to do?’  
Finally finding his voice, Dex croaked, ‘What do you think they’ll do?’  
The Finch’s eyes looked haunted. ‘They’ll kill her, won’t they.’ It wasn’t a question, not really.  
‘And Karrean,’ Krondesh said.  
‘So essentially we’re asking for their deaths.’  
‘And anyone dumb enough to try and defend them,’ Krondesh said. ‘Why, mammal, does that trouble you?’  
The Finch’s face set in an expression. She opened her mouth. Then she hesitated, apparently thinking twice. Her mouth closed and she scowled. ‘Damn it,’ she said. ‘I’m not a killer, damn it!’  
‘Funny,’ Krondesh said. ‘You coped pretty well with that firefight earlier. You’ve obviously been in a few before. And you don’t go to somewhere like the B and A without risking some violence on the way.’  
‘Self defence,’ the Finch said flatly. ‘I’ll protect myself, sure. But I don’t go out there deliberately looking for people to hurt.’  
Her words chimed something in Dex’s mind. They reminded him of his own feelings. To the Finch, he said, ‘That day when I got roped into all of this. I had a meeting with Kat. And I said something to her. I told her I was not a merc.’  
Something glimmered inside the krogan’s eyes. Apparently Krondesh could see where this was going. Dex braced himself for some outburst of verbal scorn. Instead, the krogan dropped a leading question. ‘Then what is a merc, army boy?’  
Dex had to resist the urge to flex his mandibles. He also had to resist a brief urge to hug the alien reptile. Apparently Krondesh had decided to help. ‘That’s simple enough,’ Dex said. ‘The way I see it, a merc is someone who goes looking for trouble. The more fighting, the more money. A merc has to actively seek it out.’  
The krogan nodded. ‘The economics of violence,’ he said. ‘If the flow of blood stops, so does the flow of pennies.’  
‘What I saw myself as,’ Dex said, ‘and what I tried to work as - was a guard. There is some overlap - sometimes you have to shoot people. But the difference is, when you’re guarding something, you’re trying to stop trouble. Not seek it out. A merc doesn’t have that option. If the trouble stops, so does the need for mercs. When I was in the army, I wanted to be one of the people who stopped problems. Not one of the people who caused them.’  
The Finch looked dubious. ‘Okay, but so what?’  
Dex took a breath. ‘If we try to shut down Kat, does that make us mercs or guards? I’d say the latter. Think about it. Kat’s shown no hint of moral concerns about anything. She was happy to bomb a transport tube just to get us. Her concerns were about cost, not life lost. As for her business - well, she sells her customers to the Collectors. Do I need to say anything more?’   
‘Then there’s Karrean,’ Krondesh put in. ‘He’s partly responsible for the appointment of Archon Trefak. The Batarian Hegemony’s always been bad, but it’s been under Trefak that it’s really tipped over. Karrean is part-responsible for that. The man is a monster.’  
‘Do you think,’ Dex said, ‘that either of these people will - what’s that human term?’  
‘I think you might be looking for the word “repent”,’ Krondesh said. He said it in English. ‘It doesn’t really have any krogan cognate. Nor really a turian one, as far as I know. Apparently the mammals are so argumentative that they can even argue with themselves.’  
The Finch’s mouth opened, then closed. A strange look crossed her eyes. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘yes. We do that, don’t we? That’s kind of right.’  
‘And sometimes,’ Krondesh said, ‘they decide they’ve done the wrong thing. Occasionally they even act on that. But ask yourself this - can you imagine Karrean or Kat repenting their sins?’  
The Finch’s shoulder slumped. The resistance went from her eyes. ‘No,’ she said.  
‘If they’re left alone,’ Dex said, ‘they’ll just carry on. More people - more innocent people - will be hurt. Will be killed. If they win - fuck only knows what they’ll do to this station.’  
‘No,’ Krondesh said. ‘Fuck doesn’t know - I do! You only have to look at what the Hegemony is like these days. That’s their vision of a perfect world - one where they have absolute power. If they take over here, that’s what they’ll build. And how do you know that you have power? By making others suffer! That’s the real reason the Hegemony clings to slavery. It’s got nothing to do with the economy. In fact it’s holding the economy back - slave labour is grossly inefficient. I believe your own homeworld’s history has some evidence on that point.’ He fixed the Finch with a glare.  
She shuddered. ‘You’ve heard about that, I take it?’  
‘I’ve read about it,’ Krondesh said. ‘Sugar. Cotton. The triangle trade. Plantations. I won’t claim to be any kind of expert. But it’s interesting to note that the fastest technological and financial expansion in your world’s history happened after you knocked all of that bad old stuff on the head.’  
As usual, Dex had no idea what the krogan was on about. He’d gathered vaguely that Earth’s history was messy, but wasn’t that true of most planets?  
‘The point is,’ Dex said, ‘Kat and Karrean need stopping. They won’t stop themselves. They’re never going to change their minds. That leaves us only one option.’  
‘They couldn’t just ... leave?’ the Finch asked, shrugging vaguely.  
‘Where would they go?’ Krondesh asked. ‘We don’t know Kat’s story. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a wanted note on her head back in asari space. They can be surprisingly brutal toward people who embarrass them. As for Trefak? Well he’s dead the moment he sets foot on a batarian colony. He knows where too many of Trefak’s bodies are buried.’  
The Finch sighed. ‘There is no other way, is there?’ She shrugged. ‘Okay, we’ll do this. Let me just go and open an extranet window.’  
She walked over to the console and tapped a few keys. A new window opened on the display. It was pre-set to a news channel.  
Sound and chatter flooded into the apartment.  
‘...there is a reward for the apprehension of these fugitives,’ the announcer’s voice said. ‘They have been implicated in the Gozu-Jemis Tube bombing. They are responsible for hundreds of deaths. They have also been linked to several killings in the Lower Warrens.’  
‘Hey,’ Krondesh said. ‘Look at those two pictures. They’re a krogan and a ... Oh, shit.’  
Dex stared at the browser window, feeling a sense of sick horror in his stomach.  
The voice continued. ‘The turian is believed to be a rogue army special forces deserter, going by the name Dex. The krogan is understood to be a Clanless calling himself Krondesh. Both of them are extremely dangerous. Consequently, the reward for their deaths is substantial. Prospective claimants should present an identifiable bodypart to T’Loak’s representatives at Afterlife.’  
The pictured turian and krogan were unmistakably Dex and Krondesh.  
‘Fuck,’ Dex said.  
‘Well,’ Krondesh said, ‘it would appear someone else has already spoken to T’Loak.’  
‘Fuck,’ Dex repeated. ‘The bitch. She’s blamed us! She’s blamed fucking us!’  
‘Kat is nothing if not a devious little monster,’ Krondesh agreed. ‘She’s nasty enough to be pure thresher maw vomit.’  
The sick reality of the false accusation resounded in Dex’s mind.  
‘Guess we’re not going to Afterlife after all, then,’ he said.  
‘With a reward on our heads,’ Krondesh said, ‘do we even dare leave the building?’  
That was a worryingly good question.  
The Finch stared at the screen. Then she looked back at the other two. ‘Well gentlemen,’ she said, ‘it looks like your armour will be getting another paintjob in the near future. Under the circumstances, I don’t think we can risk having you two recognised.’


	14. The Next Steps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A turian and a krogan are holed up in a human’s apartment; the human gets delegated to go shopping. Dex tries to resolve a sartorial conundrum. Meanwhile, Krondesh has books to read - obviously that is the true priority here! Later on, Dex makes a call to T’Loak’s organisation, and some possibilities are explored…

'It's a mess,' Dex said.  
'That I can see,' the Finch agreed. 'Can you fix it?'  
Dex sighed. 'I can improvise something. But it won't be good as new.'  
The Finch didn't have a proper weapons bench. She did have a back room in which she kept boxes of disassembled electronics and components, along with some tools and a workbench. She was quite hands-on in her approach to technology. Dex had been able to improvise most of what he needed.  
The damaged components of his armour were spread over the bench. The plates were charred, part-melted and warped out of shape by the overload blast. Several bits were completely missing. There was a big round burn-scar on the outside of Dex's undersuit.  
'Well,' the Finch said, 'evidently Predator gear is worth the money. If you'd taken that in your shirt, I doubt I'd be talking to you right now.'  
Instinctively, Dex reached down to his side. There was a burn scar there, under where the overload had hit. Luckily it was fairly superficial, most of the heat having gone into the plates rather than the soft tissue underneath. Medigel had been adequate to deal with the injury. It was still a bit sore, though.  
Dex picked up one of the segments and turned it over. The plate has a ragged hole burnt into one side. The paint had been charred off, exposing the greyish material underneath. That too was darkened with scorch marks.  
'I can patch it,' he said. 'The damaged plates can be recycled. We can try fitting a few thermoplastic bits from your fab. But it won't be as good.'  
The Finch frowned. 'Basically you're saying you need a new suit?'  
'Pretty much,' he said. 'Either that or this one needs taking into a proper weapons shop. They could do what I need there.'  
'And then the owner notes your head has cash on it,' the Finch said. 'That was a pretty generous bonus T'Loak's put out.'  
Dex winced. 'I know.' Having a price on his head wasn't a welcome feeling.  
'I wonder if the Hierarchy's put money on you,' the Finch said, sounding speculative.  
Dex sighed. 'Probably, but Aria will pay better. Trust me, if you want a crafty credit, you're better off going with her.'  
'That wasn't what I meant,' the Finch said. 'Dare I ask how much a new one of these costs?'  
Dex quoted a number.  
The Finch's pupils expanded. She took a breath. 'Well. That clarifies one point, I suppose. That's about four months' rent on this place.'  
Dex blinked. 'You rent?'  
'Of course. I'm not in a position to cash buy, and only an idiot gets a mortgage on Omega.'  
That was a fair point, Dex supposed. The station's housing market was no more pleasant than any of its other markets. And given how notoriously-insecure many of Omega's banks were, a long-term commitment like a mortgage was just asking for trouble. It wasn't like there were any regulations or laws or other such pesky annoyances that the bankers had to follow, after all. Any idiot could set up a so-called bank on Omega, and many idiots did.  
Dex picked up a ball of thermoplastic putty, squeezing it through his fingers. 'I can improvise some plates from this,' he said. 'Your fab can heat them and set them. It won't be great, but it's better than nothing.'  
The Finch nodded. 'Okay. That's what we'll do, then. Now, the important question - what colours do you want for your repaired suit?'  
Dex had been trying to avoid this question. 'I have to pick, do I?'  
'Unless you want to get recognised on the street - yes.'  
'What are the choices?'  
'I haven't bought anything yet,' the Finch said. 'There's a hardware store nearby. I need a few ideas from the pair of you before I go.'  
'What about Krondesh? Has he picked?'  
'Yes,' the Finch said. 'I asked him a few minutes ago. He wants blue with some yellow stripes. Don't ask me why he wants that.'  
Dex considered the question. 'How about dark red and an orange pattern for me? In low light it'll be difficult for other turians to get a good look at me.'  
The station's maintenance being what it was, low light was common inside Omega.  
The Finch nodded. 'A lot of bounty hunters are turians. That could be a good idea. Ideally it stops you getting recognised in the first place. And if you do, they'll have trouble targeting you.'  
Dex felt footsteps through the floor. A moment later, the doorway behind them filled up with krogan.  
'We've got people out to shoot us,' Krondesh rumbled. 'Shouldn't we be doing something about that?'  
'Like what?' the Finch asked. 'What exactly can we do?'  
Krondesh said, 'Has anyone tried talking to T'Loak's people? If we explained the situation, perhaps they might back off.'  
Dex frowned. 'Do you really think that would work?'  
Krondesh shrugged, his armour rattling. 'Would it make anything any worse if it didn't?'  
'What if they didn't believe us, and traced the call here?'  
The Finch said, 'I can probably set up a proxied connection.'  
Dex wasn't convinced. 'Just bouncing the packets round a few servers on the station probably isn't enough. Remember who owns most of the server hardware?'  
The Finch smiled, showing those horrible blocky human teeth. 'I wasn't talking about bouncing the calls around the station. I was more thinking bouncing it around through several comm bouys. If they manage to track our packets back to the server, they'll get an address in Argos Rho or something.'  
Dex said, 'Wouldn't that make the call very laggy?'  
'Yes, but we're talking about a voice call here, not a network game,' the Finch said. 'If it's got a second or two's delay, that's fine for conversation. Anyway T'Loak doesn't control all the comms hardware. There are private antennae. I can get a call routed through one of those.'  
'It's worth a try,' Krondesh said.  
The Finch looked at Dex. 'Can you give me a parts list for what your suit needs?'  
'Yes, but why?'  
'I need to go out to the shops anyway. There's a market near here. Interesting stuff often turns up on the second-hand stalls. It can't do any harm for me to go and take a look.' She shrugged. 'My head hasn't been priced, so it makes sense for me to go and have a browse. I'll set up the call beforehand.'  
'Sounds like a plan,' Krondesh said.  
Dex shrugged. 'Okay. I'll draft up a list.'  
A few minutes later, the Finch had set out for the markets with her shopping list. Her console had been set up with a proxied connection - its transmissions were routed out through an antenna somewhere on the outer hull, then to the comm bouys tied to the Omega-3 relay, then through no less than four other mass relays, before the packets were finally switched back to Omega itself, where the call would ring through to T'Loak's offices behind Afterlife. As a way of making an internal call, it was convoluted, but the advantage of doing it this way was that it shouldn't give away Dex and Krondesh's current location.  
Dex had adopted a lower-tech approach to the issue of visual recognition. He'd found a brown paper bag in the kitchen, and he'd put it over the console's camera. All anyone on the other end would see was the inside of the bag. That would tell them nothing about where he was.  
Dex finally felt ready to make the call.  
He sat in front of the console, and tapped out the relevant address.  
Around him, the apartment was quiet. His had always been noisier - the thin walls admitted sound from the surroundings. He'd always been able to hear the neighbours bumping and banging around. Here the only sounds were the whir of the ventilation systems, the quiet hum of the electrics and the rustling sound Krondesh was making as he poked his way through the pages of another of the Finch's books.  
With a beep, the call connected.  
'What?' a rough voice asked from the other end. The accent was batarian, Dex realised. There was no display video - apparently the other end were returning his favour.   
'I have information Aria might be interested in,' he said.  
'Like what?' the voice asked, sounding disinterested.  
'Like who really bombed the Gozu-Jemis Tunnel,' Dex said.  
There was a pause, then the voice said, 'We know who the bombers are.'  
'No,' Dex said. 'You know who Kataza T'raik and Karrean fingered.'  
'Karrean?' The voice sounded surprised.  
Dex felt his mandibles flex. Perhaps it was as well that he'd got through to one of Aria's batarian lieutenants. Karrean would be a known name amongst that community - and probably not a well-loved name.  
'Yes,' Dex said. 'You know, the guy who got kicked out of the Hegemony a while back? Well he's turned up here, and he's causing trouble.'  
'Who am I speaking to?' the voice asked, sounding rather more focused now.  
Dex felt hesitant. Should he answer that question? 'Someone with no love for either Karrean or Kat,' he said.  
The voice snorted. 'You and half the galaxy. I need something more specific.' Then the voice paused. 'Wait. Your accent. You're the turian, aren't you?'  
Shit.  
Well, there was no point denying it. 'Yes,' Dex said. 'And I don't have any interest in losing my head, if that's what you're after. And don't bother trying to trace this call - we've proxied all the addresses.'  
There was a pause, then: 'So I see. I assume you're not actually in the Hades Gamma cluster?'  
'I'm not going to answer that question,' Dex said.  
'Do you know where the krogan is?'  
Dex looked over at Krondesh. He was sat on one of the sofas, all of about two metres away. The krogan looked back.  
Dex said, 'I have no information for you on the subject of a krogan.'  
Krondesh nodded and looked back to his book.  
The voice snorted. 'I'm sure you don't,' it said.  
'Look,' Dex said, 'neither I nor the krogan were involved in the tube bombing. In fact we were nearly killed in it. We did shoot a load of Karrean's thugs, but they shot us first. Call off the bounty on us. You're after the wrong people.'  
The voice said, 'If I had a credit for every call I get like this, I'd be a millionaire. The guilty will always claim innocence. Anyway I gather you've been busy breaking and entering too.'  
Dex felt a sense of concern. They weren't buying it. Shit. 'We have Kat's personal files,' he said. 'She and Karrean have been doing deals with the Collectors. Selling people to the Collectors.'  
There was a long pause at the other end. Collector deals were known to be one of Aria's few red lines. The voice finally said, 'That's an extreme accusation. And anyway, you could be anyone. Voices can be faked. Maybe you're just making mischief.'  
Dex thought back to the break-in at Kat's headquarters. An idea occurred to him. 'If you want to check the story,' he said, 'call the Mercy Benevolent Charity Hospital. They will have received a truck, filled with a dozen or so addicts. Who had been dosed into unconsciousness with Saorex-D.' He named the drug that Kat had used on her victims. 'If any of them are still alive, some of them may recall being put into the pods.' It depended on how long they'd been drugged for before they'd been podded, of course.  
There was a pause. 'So what?' the voice asked. 'You could've had a contact there. You're going to have to do better if you want me to take this to the boss.'  
Dex's mandibles flared out in frustration. He bit back the urge to snarl. 'You seem to expect us to play our whole hand in one go,' he said. 'Which would be dumb, as you haven't offered us anything.'  
'The boss is a busy woman,' the voice said. 'She doesn't like having her time wasted.'  
Dex reached for the console, calling up Krondesh's files. The krogan had flagged a couple of them as particularly-notable. 'I'm going to send you a couple of files,' Dex said. He tapped the relevant keys. 'We have more, but these give you some idea of what Karrean and Kat were doing.'  
He clicked send.  
The silence stretched out. Finally, the voice said, 'Well, that's ... interesting.'  
'Interesting? Is that it?'  
The voice said, 'It is possible to fake this sort of stuff.' However, it sounded less assured in its scepticism than it had a moment ago.  
'If we haven't faked it,' Dex said, 'and you chose to ignore this - Kat and Karrean might do it again.'  
The files he had sent were the ones confirming that Kat and Karrean were doing deals with the Collectors, and the ones talking about bombing the tunnel. He was holding back the coup plot email for now - given the doubt that he was hearing, Dex suspected they might simply not believe that one.  
The voice hesitated again. Finally, it said, 'I'll take this to the boss. But if you're lying, it's your funeral.'  
'I'll call back in half an hour,' Dex said.  
'When you do,' the voice said, 'ask for Bray.'  
The call clicked off.  
Krondesh put his book down. 'Well,' he said, 'that could have gone worse.'  
'It could have gone better,' Dex said.  
'I don't know,' the krogan said. 'T'Loak's people must get a lot of crank calls. All day, every day. At least they're taking it to her.'  
'Should I have mentioned the coup plan?' Dex said.  
Krondesh shook his head. 'Hold that back until they decide to listen to us. The more extreme the allegation, the more like cranks we look. Cranks always start at the top.'  
Dex was relieved that the krogan agreed with his course of action. For a moment, he considered his own reaction. A few days ago, would he have been relieved at listening to a krogan? Would he even have considered asking a krogan for advice? It was surprising how fast things could change when they had to.  
'What do we do,' Dex said, 'do you think, if they decide not to listen to us?'  
'I guess we have to get off the station,' Krondesh said. 'We'll be toast if we stay here.'  
'And the coup plot? What about that? They'll only try again at some point.'  
Krondesh shrugged. 'What of it? Do we owe Omega anything? Neither of us had much choice in coming here. And neither of us have much to show for our time here. Has the station tried to help us in any way?'  
'For such a well-read individual, you have a harsh attitude.'  
'And for an ex-soldier, army boy, you can be surprisingly soft-headed sometimes.' The krogan shrugged. 'We live in a harsh galaxy where bad things happen to undeserving people. Why would it be different for us? I believe I've already commented on the structurally-broken economic system? Anyway I grew up on Tuchanka. It's not kind to the soft.'  
'But if Karrean and Kat take power here-'  
'The key word there,' Krondesh interrupted, 'is "if", army boy. How do you know their next scheme would even work? The last few failed. Any number of people have plotted coups against T'Loak. None have succeeded.'  
'Someone only needs to get lucky once,' Dex said.  
Krondesh shrugged. 'And even if they do, the station itself will boil over. Lots of people won't stand for a Kat-Karrean-Hegemony triumvirate. Then there's the rest of the galaxy. If it looks like Omega's about to get annexed to the Hegemony, you can bet the Council will get involved. I'd give it about a month before Karrean gets a Spectre's bullet in his brain.'  
'So you're arguing our efforts are pointless?'  
'No. I'm arguing that we need to worry about ourselves more than we need to worry about the station. I think you're still trying to find abstract ideals to mortgage your life to, army boy. This isn't the kind of place that's good for that stuff. You might end up in a gutter with your throat cut - and accomplish nothing in the process.'  
The krogan's logic was a brutal bucket of cold water thrown over Dex's desperate idealism. The turian fell silent for a time.  
Finally, he said, 'If we do leave - where would we go?'  
He was half-expecting Krondesh to tell him that was his problem. To his surprise, however, the krogan's response was different. 'Somewhere in the Terminus Systems, I reckon,' Krondesh said. 'There are plenty of minor colonies in need of people with guns. You might have to get over the "not a merc" thing, but finding somewhere won't be difficult. And most planets out here don't have extradition treaties with the Council governments. I doubt the Hierarchy cares enough to come looking for you all the way out here. And as for me, I know no-one cares whether I live or die.'  
'That's such a positive attitude.'  
'Not really. But it is liberating, in a funny sort of way. My former clan abandoned all obligations toward me - so I have none back toward them. The next time they blunder into some stupid and fuckwitted Clan-war, I don't have to give a shit.'  
'Would you otherwise?'  
'Army boy, I'd be obligated to fight for them,' Krondesh said. 'I see you don't get the basic idea about what a clan is, do you?  
'Oddly enough, I'm not a krogan.'  
'Oh really,' Krondesh said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. 'I'm so glad you pointed that out. I'd never have guessed!'  
'Where would we go, though?' Dex was still puzzling over this point.  
'The best bet might be one of those new-ish human colonies,' Krondesh said. 'Some of them have got decent money behind them. So there's opportunities to be had. But they don't have so much history with either of our species. And out here they get few enough immigrants that they can't be too picky. Plus most of them are from separatist groups, so they're non-Alliance. No Conciliar ties. So no-one to dig up trouble from our pasts.'  
'Non-Alliance?' Dex blinked. The idea of formal turian colonies outside of the Hierarchy was almost an oxymoron.  
'There are lots of separatist groups,' Krondesh said. 'I understand the Alliance is a fairly recent political development. And not all humans like it. In fact if the books on these shelves are anything to go by, I'm guessing our finchy friend might have some separatist sympathies herself.'  
Dex pondered that, but said nothing.  
The half hour passed but the time seemed to move very slowly. Finally, Dex felt ready to make the call. He tapped the relevant keys on the board.  
'Is Bray there, please?' he asked. The query felt weirdly polite. Perhaps a bit too polite. But casual rudeness here probably wouldn't help. Every aspect of this call would be a delicate balancing act.  
'You again,' the familiar batarian voice said.  
'Me,' Dex agreed. 'Do we have any news?'  
'I've spoken to the boss,' Bray said. 'She surprised me. You weren't laughed out of court.'  
Dex dared to feel a small amount of hope.  
'But,' Bray's voice continued, 'she still has her doubts. So do I. And it's public knowledge she and T'Raik don't get on too well.'  
Actually this was the first Dex had heard of it, but he supposed he shouldn't be surprised. Kat and Aria were to some extent competing for the same territory, and neither of them were the sort of people who'd just back down.  
Bray continued, 'You could just be dropping her name to play on our sympathies.'  
'That hardly seems fair,' Dex said. 'We could've kept this information to ourselves.'  
'Bird,' Bray said, sounding exasperated, 'this is Omega. Fair has nothing to do with it. Anyway, the station's been damaged. Someone has to be punished - punished publicly! If that doesn't happen, every greedy merc and random nutjob will start planting bombs everywhere. And then it's only a matter of time before someone knocks out a key support column. Or, may the Pillars give me strength, they block a fucking giant hole in the fucking hull. This is too serious to worry about fair.'  
'I have nothing to gain by lying,' Dex said. 'If I was lying, you'd find out. My situation can only get worse that way.'  
Apparently Bray didn't buy that argument. 'The word of a turian deserter is suspect,' he said. Dex winced. They knew about that? Heedless of his momentary distress, Bray continued, 'And for that matter the word of an outcast krogan is hardly any better. Though of course you no doubt know nothing about that. And never mind the fact the last time anyone saw the pair of you, you were together.'  
Damn. Dex gritted his teeth. 'So where does this leave us?' he asked.  
Bray said, 'The boss is prepared to offer a deal. The terms aren't negotiable. You can take it or you can take off.'  
Okay. They were still talking. It could be worse, Dex supposed. 'What exactly is being offered?'  
'We need a confession,' Bray said. 'Then we'll believe you.'  
Dex blinked. 'A confession?'  
'Yes. We want you to bring us Karrean. Alive.'  
Dex stared. 'You want us to-?'  
'Yes, bird,' Bray said. 'If he corroborates your story, T'raik becomes Aria's problem and stops being yours. In fact, she quickly stops being anyone's problem after that. Except maybe the crematorium's. If there's enough of her left to burn.'  
'But our heads are still up for sale,' Dex pointed out.  
'If you agree these terms,' Bray said, 'we'll suspend the bounties for one hundred hours. And we'll inform all our regulars of that condition. But, if some freelancer drops a bead on you, that's your problem, not ours.'  
'And if we bring Karrean in?' Dex asked. 'What then?'  
The voice was silent for a moment. Then Bray said, 'If Karrean confirms your story, then the boss says you can take your pick of what's in Kat's armoury. If it's still intact when we're done with her, of course. We don't have much need for it. We've got enough guns. But I'm sure you can find something you might like.'  
Dex's breath caught in his throat. The Black Widow. It could be his! It could actually still be his.  
Almost as an afterthought, Bray added, 'And we'll put out a statement publicly absolving you and the krogan of all blame. All bounties will be cancelled. What you do with yourselves afterwards is your business. Of course, if Karrean doesn't confirm your story...' Bray fell silent for a moment. 'Well, that won't end well for you.'  
'I think I'd gathered that,' Dex said.  
'When you have what we want,' Bray said, 'bring him straight to Afterlife. The doorman's been told to expect you. We don't care if Karrean's missing a few teeth or limbs, but he needs to be able to speak. Am I understood?'  
'Yes,' Dex said.  
'Good,' Aria's lieutenant said. 'You know what to do.'  
The line went dead.  
'Well,' Krondesh said, 'shit.'  
'Indeed,' Dex said.

 

* * *

The Finch returned a bit later, carrying a bag full of items. She took it straight to her electronics room. Dex followed a moment later.  
She was putting various bits out in a neat row on the workbench. 'Have a look at these,' she said. 'Let me know if there's anything that's useful in here.'  
Dex looked at the various plates. His mandibles moved. With a growing feeling of enthusiasm, he said, 'Actually, those look quite good.'  
The Finch smiled, her slab-like omnivore's teeth uncomfortably-visible. 'Excellent,' she said. 'I looked up the Predator L, M and H lines on the extranet. They're made by Armax Arsenal. A lot of companies use standardised templates for their sizing. So I thought perhaps some bits for cheaper AA suits could be fitted in.'  
'Better than anything I could run off on the fab,' Dex agreed. 'Thanks.'  
'I had another idea.' The Finch dug around in the bottom of her bag and pulled out a couple of spray cans. 'We should paint the two of you in the same colours. Then if anyone asks, you're a couple of bodyguards from some merc gang I've hired.'  
Dex nodded. 'That will deflect some attention.'  
'Is there any news?' she asked, gesturing in the direction of the console in the main room.  
'Some,' Dex said. 'I've spoken to one of Kat's lieutenants. They've agreed to suspend the bounties - for now, anyway.'  
'I'm sensing a "but" here.'  
Dex nodded. 'They want us to bring in Karrean. For questioning. They don't quite believe us.'  
She frowned. 'What about the files?'  
'The files are the only reason they're even talking to us. Apparently there are some tensions between Kat and Aria. Her people flat-out said they thought I was trying to play on that to get sympathy.'  
'Christ,' the Finch muttered. 'What a mess.'  
'They've apparently worked out some of my personal history,' he added. 'I was told that the word of a turian deserter wasn't to be taken too seriously.'  
'The irony being,' the Finch said, 'that I gather you deserted because you were too honest, not the other way around.'  
Dex nodded. 'So basically it seems we're going after Karrean.'  
The Finch nodded. 'Okay. So we have less than a hundred hours to bag and tag a batarian strongman, and probably have to shoot our way through half his retinue in the process? Excellent.'  
Dex sighed. 'Well, technically, you could walk away from this. There's no money on your head.'  
The Finch sighed and shook her head. 'Correction. There's none on my head now. There will be soon enough, though. Kat will know that I was involved in what happened at her dealership. She'll know I'm with you. If she gets away with this, I'm next on the list. No, the only way I'm getting out of this is with you two.'  
Dex was oddly cheered to hear that. 'Okay,' he said. 'Well, we need to get some ideas together about how we're going to do this.'  
She nodded at the workbench. 'You get your armour sorted out. Then we can meet in the main room, and have a chat.'  
'Okay,' Dex said.  
About an hour later, Dex had the replacement plates fixed into his suit. They weren't as good as the originals, but at least the hole was plugged. He changed back into the suit to check it out; everything seemed to fit properly and nothing was loose. Feeling somewhat better, he wandered back into the main room, helmet under one arm.  
The Finch and Krondesh were huddled over the console.  
'What are you looking at?' Dex asked.  
'The message chain,' Krondesh said.  
'We were thinking,' the Finch said, 'that it would be best to have Karrean come to us. Not the other way round.'  
'Ambushing him makes some sense,' Dex agreed. 'But where?'  
'We realised something,' Krondesh said. 'Kat's mythical airlock doesn't exist. But the Collectors must be getting onto the station somehow. And Kat and Karrean must know about it. So we went digging through the files.'  
'You found something, I take it?' Dex asked.  
Krondesh nodded. 'Yes. It turns out there's a small maintenance bay outside the pumping station. The machinery sometimes needs to be serviced from the outside. All the moving parts make it difficult to get around inside it, and it can't be completely stopped.'  
'The pumping station?' Dex asked, feeling stupefied.  
'Yes,' the Finch said. 'You know, right at the tip of the station?' She looked at him, apparently awaiting some response. 'No, clearly, you don't,' she said. 'Well, the station hull is cold, and the air inside is warm and humid. All those moist lungs, you know. So of course you get condensation along the inside of the hull. And all that water has to go somewhere. If there weren't pumps, the station would risk flooding.'  
Enlightenment began to dawn. 'But - why at the tip?' Dex asked.  
'The internal gravity,' the Finch said. 'It's oriented with down pointed toward the tip of the station. Stupid if you ask me - radial in the hab cylinders would be better. Or even just make the asteroid itself the down-direction!'  
'If you look out through a window,' Krondesh said, 'the asteroid itself always appears to be above you.'  
'So that's why the pumps are down there,' the Finch said. 'The whole station has a lot of water in the air, and a lot of surface area. It condenses roughly an Olympic swimming pool of water every five seconds.'  
'Shit,' Dex said.  
'Quite,' she said. 'But collecting all that water is useful. It can be recycled to the rest of the station, for all sorts of uses. Anyway the pumps don't get too many visitors - no-one lives down there - and they put out a massive heat signature. All that machinery, all that friction!'  
'Oh,' Dex said. 'If you had a small ship, like a shuttle, you could sneak it in without anyone knowing. The heat signature would hide it from the sensors - and most of those are further up the station. So it would be a long way from them.'  
'And if you approached the station on a vector pointed along its axis,' the Finch said, 'the station itself would hide your approach. And this is exactly what the Collectors have been doing.'  
'That's interesting,' Krondesh said. 'They really know their spaceships, don't they?'  
'Apparently so,' the Finch agreed. 'Anyway they take a shuttle down to that maintenance port, dock it there, and meet with their business partners. Then they basically stack the shuttle full of those pods and fly off.'  
‘So,’ Dex said, ‘the plan is something like ambush Karrean down there?’  
The Finch nodded. ‘Yes.’  
‘How do we get him to turn up there?’ Krondesh asked. ‘We’re on a tight schedule here, mammal.’  
The Finch pointed at the console. ‘We have all the data. I’m going to spoof one of the messages he gets from his Collector contact, demanding an urgent meeting.’  
Dex nodded. ‘That might just lure him out. But we’d have to get there first.’  
‘Not necessarily,’ the Finch said. ‘Your earlier escapade outside the station gave me an idea. We go outside the station – and intercept them on the way back from the meeting!’  
‘Outside?’ Krondesh looked surprised. ‘But - you don’t have a suit, mammal.’  
The Finch shrugged. ‘Not yet, but there are plenty of shops and I have money. That problem can be solved easily enough.’  
Dex was thinking furiously. ‘So if we go outside the station – wait, they won’t know we’re there. We really can ambush them! This could work!’  
‘Is that your professional judgement, army boy?’  
‘Yes, Krondesh, it is.’  
The krogan’s mouth opened, then closed. Krondesh acquiesced with ill grace.  
‘So,’ the Finch said, ‘are we agreed?’  
Krondesh shrugged. ‘Beats just sitting here, I suppose.’  
Dex nodded. ‘Let’s do this.’


	15. Karrean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A turian, a krogan and a human conduct an ambush. Intelligence turns out to be flawed. Moral and practical calculations have to be undertaken; a reluctant consensus is achieved. Several batarian mercenaries have a very, very bad day.
> 
> Krondesh gets to headbutt a few people, the Finch presents a moral thesis, Dex sabotages some guns.
> 
> And then it’s on toward the man himself…

The sky was black and the stars were cold, sharp points.  
Dex could hear his own breathing and the faint crackle of static over the radio. Occasionally the pressure seals around his visor and under his helmet would protest, creaking or groaning. Other than that, everything was the monotonous, maddening silence of space.  
'It looks big,' Krondesh said.  
The station loomed above them. They were a long way down, almost at the bottom. The whole structure hung above them like an inverted mountain. Beyond it was the asteroid itself, a mass of craters, greyish rock and deep shadows. Bits of it were backlit in a dim, ruddy light by the long spines of the station's ring of mass field generators. The spines held up the standing kinetic barrier, which allowed the station to exist in such a relatively-dense field of asteroidal debris. Several other asteroids could be seen, drifting nearby. They were half-lit by the diffuse pink light of Sahrabarik.  
The krogan and the human were close by. The Finch was wearing her newly-acquired hardsuit. Based on her budget and her low level of experience with these things, Dex had suggested that she go for a light armour-class Ariake Industries Survivor-model suit. Since the Finch didn't really have much experience moving in one of these things, there was no point her burdening herself down with a heavily-armoured suit. If they had to escape in a hurry, she would need all the agility she could muster.  
She had taken Dex's advice, somewhat to his relief. He’d thought she might argue, but in the end she’d just nodded and said that he probably knew more about this than she did. She was carrying her Carnifex pistol, as before. Her tech armour was engaged over the suit. Getting the omnitool integration right had taken a few goes, but between her and Dex they'd got it set up properly. The white and blue colours of her suit reminded Dex of the ones Krondesh had enjoyed prior to his most recent re-painting.  
'It is big,' Dex said, his voice sounding oddly flat inside the confines of his helmet.  
They were surrounded by the usual tangle of cables, ducts and pipes that one found on the skin of Omega. Random antennae and pylons sprouted here and there. Fifty metres behind them, the ragged skeleton of a radio dish reared into the sky. Either the budget had run out during its construction or some raider had damaged it. Whichever was the case, its frame had big gaps and most of the plating was missing. In the time they'd been walking through this technological desert, Dex hadn't seen it move once. There were no lights on it.  
'The service airlock is another sixty metres,' the Finch said. 'It's behind there.' She pointed to a large collection of dull metallic cylinders and pipes. Some sort of cooling apparatus, Dex thought.  
Nearby Krondesh was still looking up, at the looming bulk above them. 'The asteroids,' he said. 'I don't remember seeing anything else like this elsewhere. Why are there so many here?'  
The Finch's voice crackled with static. 'Most of them are fragments of Omega itself,' she said. 'We're in a belt here, of course, but they're pretty diffuse. Normally there wouldn't be much to see. Thing is, people have been knocking chunks off of this rock for so long now. And most of them end up on similar orbits, just drifting along.'  
'That almost happened to us,' Krondesh rumbled. 'I don't think I'd make a good moon. I'm not plump enough, unlike the turian here.'  
'You and your oversized hump,' Dex said.  
'See that? He's looking at my hump again!' Apparently the krogan was on fine form today.  
'What on Earth have I walked into here?' the Finch said, apparently to the universe in general.  
'That's easy,' Krondesh said. 'You're not on Earth. Or anywhere near it. So you haven't.'  
Dex looked up, shading his eyes with a hand. Blocking the pinkish light of Sahrabarik off, he noticed something. 'Oh,' he said.  
'What?' Krondesh asked.  
'That must be Urdak,' Dex said. 'I'd never noticed it before.'  
Sure enough, near where Sahrabarik was, the brown dwarf companion was visible as a bright dot of reddish-orange light.  
'How are we doing for time?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex checked his omnitool. 'Karrean should be just arriving at his bogus appointment,' he said. 'We need to be in place in the next ten minutes.'  
Earlier, the Finch had sent the spoofed message. Karrean had responded quickly. Luckily, the intended recipient should never have seen it - the Finch had forced the message addressing, so it was actually routed somewhere other than where the headers suggested. With luck, Karrean would have no idea that he'd been duped. At least, not until the ambush occurred.  
The Finch pointed. 'There - an access lock.'  
Up ahead was one of the station's surface access locks. It didn't look like it had been used recently. There was a slight rime of ice around the edges of the circular door, presumably from outgassing from the interior. The airlock's wheel was dogged tight in the locked position.  
'Looks like it will need some muscle to get it to move,' the Finch said.  
'Lucky you brought me then,' Krondesh said. The krogan strode over to the wheel. He braced himself against the floor, bent down and grabbed the wheel. With a grunt, he made it turn.  
The wheel's movement was soundless in the vacuum, but Dex felt vibrations run through the hull beneath his feet. The wheel was evidently protesting the motion.  
A puff of vapour fountained into the air, sparkling in the pink light. The thin ice crust had shattered. The lock opened.  
'There,' Krondesh said. 'See? I'm not just a pretty hump!'  
'I won't even dignify that with a reply,' Dex said. 'Let's get inside.'  
A few minutes later they were inside the station again. The airlock ran through its pressurisation cycle without any problems. Sound and warmth returned to their environment. They found themselves in the clearer, whiter lights of the station's interior.  
The lock had brought them out not far from the maintenance bay that Karrean's Collector customers had been using. They were at the end of another anonymous Omegan corridor. This one was in far better condition than anything in the Lower Warrens. The floor was clean, there was no dripping water and the wall panels were all in place. As best Dex could tell through the filters in his helmet, the air was dry and faintly-scented with ozone and machine oils. They were surrounded by the usual susurration of air vents and fans, but there was also a grinding, rumbling noise. Dex could even feel it through his bootsoles.  
'That must be the pumps,' the Finch said. 'They're loud.'  
'Quite,' Krondesh agreed. 'I guess they have to shift a lot of water.'  
'Let's review the plan,' Dex said, feeling himself slipping into platoon sergeant mode again.  
'Oh here we go,' Krondesh said. 'Army boy's back again.'  
Ignoring the krogan, Dex said, 'We've actually come out behind where Karrean believes he's meeting his contact. That's about fifty metres over there.' He pointed in the relevant direction. 'The meeting place is a big central hall, on the way to the docks behind the pumping station. It has three entrances. There's the one Karrean will be coming from. There's the one that leads into the main pumping complex. And then there's the one that leads to the dock and the maintenance airlock - that would be the one we're arriving through.'  
'Karrean walks right into us,' Krondesh said.  
Dex said, 'The hall is three stories high. It has some galleries up the side. I'll be going up to the first one of them. From there I can throw drones, and I have a good angle with my Phaeston. Normally I'd prefer to snipe from the up there, but my Mantis got blown up with the skycar.'  
'And my pants,' Krondesh said.  
'Well from the state they were in,' Dex said, 'I wouldn't count that as any loss.'  
The Finch made a choking noise. 'I've got mixed feelings about the idea of a pants-free krogan,' she said.  
'Mixed?' Dex was surprised.  
'Yeah. One the one hand my immediate reaction is yikes. On the other hand, I'm also sort of like, that could be interesting, you know?'  
'I, uh, don't think I do,' Dex said.  
'Mammal,' Krondesh said, 'if he was that way inclined, we'd know about it by now. He's seen me naked, after all.'  
'You - what?' the Finch sounded very surprised.  
'I didn't actually look,' Dex said.  
'That bloody salarian did, though,' Krondesh said.  
'Salarian?' the Finch sounded increasingly confused. 'I think I might be missing some context here. Do I even want the context?'  
Dex sighed. 'It was when I bought him that suit. Obviously he had to get changed, and we were a bit limited on time and space. And despite my generosity, he hasn't shut up about it since.'  
'Yeah but you're easily needled, army boy,' Krondesh said. 'Forgive a cynical young krogan his fun.'  
'Young? You're in your eighties!'  
'Yes, I know. You don't need to rub my face in my youthful inexperience, you know.' The krogan was reproachful.  
The Finch made a choking noise. It might have been a stifled laugh. 'Weren't we supposed to be reviewing a plan?' she asked.  
'You might have noticed,' Dex said, 'but Krondesh doesn't do plans.'  
'No, that's what you're for. Even if you are crap at strategizing.'  
'Krondesh,' Dex said, 'please do shut up.'  
By a miracle, the krogan fell silent.  
Dex continued, 'Since I have no sniper rifle, I can't snipe anything. What I can do is provide covering fire from the gallery. Karrean and his people will be entering through the door from the main area. Krondesh - you can circle around through the side corridors, and charge them. They won't be expecting an attack from behind.' Dex looked at the Finch. 'I need you to support Krondesh. If they have any sort of turrets - hack them. Try overloading any guns they have, or any tech armour.'  
She nodded. 'Okay. Hey, if they're batarians, they might be using that blade armour thing. I reckon an overload charge dropped on spiky metal bits could be nasty.'  
'That's an interesting thought,' Dex said. 'At the least jumping voltage arcs should throw off their aim. All right, if you get a chance, try it.'  
He looked back at Krondesh. 'Remember we need Karrean alive. If possible, I think we should avoid biotic explosions.'  
Quite calmly, the krogan asked, 'And what if it's me or him?'  
'Then blow him up,' Dex said.  
Krondesh started, as if the answer surprised him.  
'Seriously, the whole point of this exercise is to save our lives. If it looks like that won't work, then we prioritise getting out of here. We're only ten hours in on our hundred - we've still got ninety to figure out a way off the station.'  
‘Okay,’ Dex said. ‘That makes sense.’  
Moments later, they were outside the designated room. Dex opened the door and tossed a drone through. It flew off with a quiet buzz.  
'I've programmed this drone to lurk in the far corner,' Dex said. 'It will give us a visual feed. With any luck Karrean's people won't notice that it's there. And we'll know if anyone's already there.'  
A grainy image appeared over his omnitool. Krondesh leaned in for a closer look. 'That door to the right,' he said, pointing to one side of the roughly square chamber. 'That's where Karrean will be coming through?'  
Dex nodded. 'Yes.'  
'Looks like we got here first,' the Finch said. The chamber was empty of people.  
'Good,' Krondesh said. 'The ambush is a go, I assume?'  
Dex said, 'See that stack of crates in the centre of the floor? When they get to there - when, not before! - that's when I want you to rush them.'  
Krondesh nodded. 'Understood. I'll stick to fists, not warp balls.' He shrugged. 'Can't say it'll go any better for them, though.'  
The Finch looked at the doors ahead of them. 'It's probably best if I hang back,' she said. 'I can work most effectively from cover.'  
Dex nodded. 'That makes sense. Do that. Okay, looks like we have the basics in place. I need to get in position. They might be monitoring comms channels, so let's keep chatter to the minimum.'  
The Finch pointed. 'See this other stack of crates? Next to our door? I can take cover behind that, and pop out when I need to.'  
'You can give me some covering fire,' Krondesh said.  
Dex nodded. 'Good idea. Okay, let's get into position. When it's time to go, I'll signal. Don't do anything before then!'  
'A krogan to do the heavy lifting and a turian organising' Krondesh said. 'We're ticking off all the stereotypes here.'  
'What about me?' the Finch asked.  
'You can try and grab the credit afterwards,' Krondesh said.  
'He's got an answer for everything, hasn't he?' the Finch observed.  
'I try my best,' Krondesh said.  
A few minutes passed. They moved to get in position.  
Dex's chosen shooting spot was a metal-framed gallery on one side of the room. The gallery gave access to a small backroom and some pipes. A rusty ladder linked the gallery to the floor. The far end of it had some concealment, courtesy of a row of metal plates that had been bolted to the handrails. Dex doubted that the plates would stop any rounds, but they would prevent a shooter from being able to see him.  
He scrambled up the ladder, booted feet thumping onto the rungs. He winced at the noise, but there was no help for it. His drone showed no change from the door. No-one had heard the sounds, thank the spirits.  
A few moments later, Dex found himself crouched on the gallery, squatting behind the row of rusty plates, overlooking the chamber with his rifle. The junction-chamber was a dingy, untidy space. The wall plating was streaked with rust and the floor panels were dented. Overhead lights partly-lit the space. Shadows pooled in the room's corners. This was part of Dex's plan - he was up here, in the middle of one of the bigger patches of shade. With his dark-coloured armour, he should be hard to see against the gloom. The deep red and orange of his repainted suit would blend in well with the rust-coloured walls.  
Below the gallery and to his right was the door Krondesh would charge through. Opposite it on the room's rightmost wall was the door Karrean and his troops would come through. On the far side was the main exit from the chamber. The space itself had heaps of crates lining the walls, and several stacks dotting the room itself. The Finch was crouched behind one of them. Dex could see her from where he was, but Karrean and his accomplices wouldn't be able to see her.  
There was an orange glow around her arm. Dex wondered what she was doing with her omnitool.  
There was a faint crackle in Dex's helmet earphones. 'It's me,' the Finch's voice said. 'I've run a quick scan to double-check the chamber. I haven't detected any surveillance equipment.'  
'Good,' Dex said. 'Karrean won't know we're here.' He was gripping his Phaeston tightly. The rifle was fully-extended and ready for fire. 'I'll move my drone over beside the door once they're in. Hit them from behind.'  
He could hear his breathing inside the helmet. The air he was inhaling had the familiar faint rubber and metal smell of the suit's respirator.  
'Okay,' the Finch said. The glow of her omnitool vanished.  
There was new sound. As well as the omnipresent whir of the chamber's ventilation and the overhead fans, Dex heard the growl of the door.  
'Get ready,' he said. Changing the channel, he said, 'Krondesh - be alert!'  
'Understood,' the krogan's voice said in Dex's ears. Now that the fighting was about to begin, Krondesh was all business. The krogan might have a self-destructive streak but he wasn't incompetent.  
Dex reached to his belt with one hand and palmed his remaining drone. He rested his thumb on the little object's activation key.  
The door opened.  
Four of Karrean's troops sprinted through. More batarians, armed with rifles, in armour bearing Blue Suns colours. They were moving in two pairs. One pair peeled off to the right, the other pair to the left. One of the mercs had the tell-tale glow of tech armour over his suit.  
The troops were fanning out to search the room. They moved crisply, keeping the guns up, aiming and focusing. There was no sign of Karrean yet. Tech Armour Guy, who was presumably in charge, had taken up station near the door.  
Dex felt growing unease. Shit. This lot looked almost professional. That was going to complicate things.  
One merc was getting close to the Finch's crates. His boot squeaked on the floor-panel. She heard, twitched, moved. Dex saw her motion, a nervous shift.  
Her elbow bumped a crate.  
Dex saw it happen. He winced as she did. The crate shook. It rattled.  
The batarian merc on the other side froze. He turned and made a hand gesture toward Tech Armour Guy. Dex had been trained on merc hand signals. This was the one for 'Watch Out'.  
Dex realised the situation was about to go off the rails.  
He thumbed his reached for his omnitool. Hoping the glow wouldn’t be seen from the ground, he sent his drone some new instructions.  
It whirled out from its corner. It shot toward the open door.  
'Shit! Over there!' one of the mercs yelled.  
The movement was coming in at the side and from an angle from where the Finch was. The mercs were distracted.  
'Finch,' Dex said to her. 'Tech armour guy, your front and left. Hit him with an incinerate-blast.'  
To her credit, she didn't hesitate. 'Got it,' she said. He saw her omnitool blink into life. She leaned out.  
Dex moved. Grabbing his Phaeston, he opened fire on the mercs below.  
'Shit!' one of them shouted. 'Attackers! Up there!'  
The drone had landed into the corridor outside. As Dex had hoped, it came to life. He caught a glimpse of the flickering light of the flames in the corridor.  
He was aiming at the merc below. The Phaeston rumbled in his hands. The merc's kinetic barriers flared, then collapsed. Hit by the full force of the gun, the merc was knocked over. Dex saw the fire tear into the batarian's armour. The merc was down on the floor. Dead, stunned or pretending - it didn't matter for now. What was important was that one opposing gun was quiet.  
There was a whoosh and a roar. A spray of flaming incendiary gel spurted at Tech Armour Guy. The plume cast a sharp light on the floor.  
Tech Armour saw it coming. He dropped and rolled. The plume splashed over the wall, above and to his left. Then it exploded into flame. Paint blistered and cracked around it and a heathaze swirled above it. The fire crackled and hissed.  
Damn. Dex had hoped it would get him. Still, he wasn't shooting for the moment. The wall where he'd been stood was scorched and charred. There was a smell of burning.  
A rattle of gunfire roared. Sparks flew above his head. Dex ducked down. It was the other two batarians, who'd gone to the left of the door. They were firing on him.  
The plate in front of him shook and screeched. A new hole appeared in it. Dex heard a round plink off the wall behind him. They couldn't see him, but all they had to do was shoot at the plates. The next round might find him. It was time to act.  
Dex said to the Finch, 'The two on your front and left. Drop an overload on them.'  
Again to her credit, she didn't argue. She ducked out from cover and her omnitool fired off a different burst. Although Dex didn't see it, he knew that for just an instant, the Finch's omnitool was firing off a UV laser toward the target, ionising the air between him and her.  
An arc of electricity jumped across, carried on the temporary plasma.  
Dex heard the batarian merc's scream as the electric discharge ripped off his shields and bit through his suit. With a wince the turian thought of his own earlier injury. Still, it had to be done.  
He heard boots smacking on floor panels and shouts from the corridor. The angle of the flame-light was changing. Several bodies burst into the room. That drone had served its intended purpose, flushing Karrean and his other allies out of the corridor. There were in total another four of them.  
There he was. He was dressed in the same olive green combat suit Dex had seen in the video at Kat's office, complete with blades. This time he was wearing a helmet as well, but it was definitely him.  
Shit. There were more enemies than Dex had counted on.  
'Krondesh,' Dex said. 'Barrier up. Time to charge!'  
'Got it,' the krogan growled. The alien reptile sounded enthusiastic.  
Dex improvised quickly. The best force multiplier was his drone. It had a flamethrower mode too. Its power supply would be depleted as it had been running for longer, but if a few of the mercs could be herded onto it, a burst of flame could take down their shields. That would make them easier to hurt.  
He called up his omnitool and fired off a couple of rapid instructions to the drone. Then he ducked out of concealment with his Phaeston, and fired off a wide arc. It wasn't aimed at anything, rather being intended just to make the mercs duck.  
He leaned back into cover.  
'Drop an overload on Karrean,' Dex told the Finch. 'It might stun him.' Somehow he doubted it would be that easy, but it was worth a try.  
He heard an electric hiss-crackle from below. It was followed by a rattle of confused gunfire.  
He called up his omnitool again. Time to try a quick bit of sabotage on their guns. It probably wouldn't work as well as it had on the Waypointers before - merc guns would have better VI security. But it was worth a go. Dex raised his fingers toward the keypad -  
He felt static electricity. He caught a glimpse, just for a moment, of a corona crawling over his arm. He stared. What the -?  
He was yanked upwards.  
Dex gasped. A vice of force clamped around his chest. The wind was knocked out of him. The force was incredible. The junction chamber spun around him. He was flying. The overhead lights flared into his eyes. He blinked as they spun away. He saw the gantry off to one side. Everything was overlaid with a hissing, spiting biotic corona. And the floor was -  
Right here.  
Dex crashed into the floor. Pain erupted across his side. His head rang. The Phaeston was gone from his grasp. He tried to roll himself up. He got halfway to his feet -  
An olive-green boot smacked into his side.  
Dex tumbled over to the side.  
Karrean loomed in his view. The batarian had the remnants of a corona spitting and fizzling out over his body. Dex caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the batarian's eye lenses. No-one had told them Karrean was a biotic! This was bad.  
Karrean pulled his arm back, and a modified omnitool flashed into life over it. Dex realised he was about to get a very nasty punch. Slavers used these, to stun prisoners, he'd heard.  
There wasn't time to get out of the way.  
An idea occurred to him. 'Krondesh!' he roared into his microphone. 'Get in here! Now!'  
The other door opened. With a roar, the krogan charged in. Dex felt a surge of relief. Thank goodness for Krondesh's lack of stealth!  
Karrean turned, hearing the krogan's roar.  
'Shit!' Dex heard a merc shout. 'Charging krogan! On your side!'  
That had been Dex's intention - engineer a convenient distraction. He rolled to one side, out of immediate punching range. Where had his Phaeston gone? Oh yes, it had landed over there, beyond the pile of crates. Just as he saw it, he also saw the Finch duck out from her cover. She had what he thought was a scowl of concentration on her face. What the hell was she doing?  
She raised her Carnifex and fired off a couple of shots. One of them hit a merc trooper square on the chest. He spun and collapsed.  
Dark batarian blood spilled out across the floor. Dex noted that the merc evidently had felt that one. But the turian had more immediate problems that someone else's injury.  
He heard Krondesh roar something. The krogan had a decent bellow, Dex had to acknowledge.  
Karrean twitched, as if distracted. Then he drew back his arm. His foot lashed out, cracking into Dex's chestplates again. The boot connected with a crunch. Dex felt some of the weaker replacement plates give way. Pain surged across the half-healed burn from the overload injury.  
He gasped. The world briefly fizzed around him.  
With him momentarily incapacitated, Karrean's attention went somewhere else. The batarian looked up at Krondesh. Karrean gestured and then -  
There was a bang, a flash of light and he vanished.  
Dex rolled to his feet just in time to see Krondesh bowled over. Karrean was somehow right on top of him! He was grappling with one of Krondesh's shoulder plates with one hand. The other was raising that ugly-looking harpoon gun of his. Karrean apparently intended to bludgeon Krondesh with the Kishock.  
How had the batarian moved so fast? He couldn't have got over there by now - could he? What had been that flash and bang?  
Then grim realisation set in.  
'Oh shit,' Dex said aloud. 'No-one told us he was a biotic!'  
Karrean had apparently received the batarian equivalent of vanguard training. He'd charged Krondesh. He must also have used a biotic effect of some sort to yank Dex down from the gallery.  
There was a loud, painful screech. It was like fingernails on glass. One of Karrean's defensive blades had dragged itself over Krondesh's armour.  
Krondesh seemed a bit stunned. His movements were unco-ordinated, dazed. In close combat a krogan should have all the advantages, but Dex had no idea what being hit by a biotic charge would do. In fact Krondesh was probably lucky to be alive. As he looked on in helpless horror, Dex noted that Krondesh's armour was badly dented. Turians didn't use biotic charges much so Dex was no expert, but he had a feeling that if he'd been the target, he might be dead already.  
Karrean raised the Kishock to strike.  
Franticly, Dex looked around. Where had his Phaeston gone? It was over there, lying next to a toppled crate -  
Pain exploded. Something cracked behind Dex's head. He felt himself knocked over. He landed on his back, head spinning.  
'Got you, you bird bastard,' a gloating voice said.  
Dex was staring up into the eyelenses of one of the mercs. The trooper's armour was blackened with soot along one side. Apparently he'd had a close brush with the drone's flamethrower. The merc had cracked Dex over the head with his rifle.  
The trooper was bringing the M8 up, aiming.  
Dex felt nauseous. His head was ringing. He couldn't quite focus his eyes. He tried to raise his leg to kick out -  
A booted foot stomped down on it. He heard and felt the crack of its impact.  
'Not this time, bird,' the merc gloated. 'I've got you-'  
A bright, hot blur shot over his shoulder.  
The merc jerked, instinctively turning. Then there was a loud crunch. He staggered back. Blood spurted out of a hole in his neck. The merc toppled to the ground. He spasmed as more blood gushed out.  
Dex tried to roll to his feet. Suddenly hands were grabbing him. It was the Finch. She dragged him up to his feet.  
'Thanks,' he said, panting.  
'No problem,' she said. 'I would've dropped an overload, but I didn't want to hit you - shit!'  
She turned and pulled up her Carnifex. The gun barked. One more merc dropped.  
There was a bang from behind them.  
'Krondesh!' Dex said, remembering. He turned.  
Karrean had brought the Kishock down, but the krogan had jerked to the side just in time. The heavy sniper rifle had smacked into the floor-panels.  
Then blue light erupted around the krogan.  
Karrean was hurled backwards.  
He smacked up against a pile of crates, flopping down to the floor.  
Dex ducked down and grabbed the fallen merc's M8. 'Help Krondesh!' he told the Finch.   
He staggered over to Karrean and planted an unsteady boot on the batarian's chestplate, carefully below the line of blades. A quick look around revealed that between his drone and their fighting, there were no more active mercs in the room.  
The batarian stirred. He was still alive, apparently.  
Dex levelled the gun at Karrean. 'Don't move,' he said.  
There were footsteps next to Dex. Suddenly the human and the krogan were beside him.  
'Are you all right?' Dex asked Krondesh.  
The krogan's massive helmet nodded. 'I am now. Probably got a lot of bruises and some chipped plates, but nothing I'll die of. That bastard's charge surprised me.'  
'What was that you did?' the Finch asked. 'The light, I mean?'  
'That?' Krondesh shrugged with a rattle of damaged armour. He was holding his Katana in one hand. His other had the maw-tooth knife. 'That was my barrier. I released it. When you do it in one go, you get a burst of gravitational energy. It's not controlled like throwing or pulling things, but it can kick stuff off of you.'  
The Finch said, ‘I’ll check on the mercs, see if there are any left who can fight.’  
Dex nodded. ‘Good idea. And by the way – thanks. That shot of yours probably saved my life.’  
Her helmet nodded. ‘Any time.’ Carnifex in hand, she walked off to examine the room.  
There was a groan from under Dex’s boot. ‘Don’t even think it,’ Dex told the batarian.  
Thinking quickly, Dex reached down, behind the batarian’s head. He grabbed hold of the tip of the man’s biotic amp and yanked it from its cortical socket. The batarian shuddered and moaned in pain.  
Dex dropped the amp on the floor next to him, and crushed it under the sole of his boot. The prisoner wouldn’t be using his biotics on them now. Inside his helmet, Dex was grinning. By the spirits, it felt good to be winning again!  
‘Something’s odd about this,’ Krondesh said.  
Dex wanted to ignore the krogan and enjoy this moment of triumph. They’d done it! They’d actually done it! Now all they needed to do was get Karrean here over to Afterlife, and their problems would be ended.  
‘Really?’ Dex asked him. They were going to have to get the batarian out of his suit, Dex noted. No point trying to tie him up over all those metal bits – they’d just cut through any ropes. Dragging a part-naked batarian around would be a bit odd even by Omegan standards, but Dex didn’t really care. Besides he supposed the suit and the Kishock probably had some resale value. He looked at Karrean’s gun, thoughtfully.  
‘Wonder how much that toy’s worth,’ he mused aloud. ‘I’m half tempted to collect it myself, but I gather they’re a bastard to aim…’  
‘Wait,’ Krondesh said, sounding suspicious. ‘Why was our batarian friend here so attacky? Aren’t politicians all cowards?’  
‘I’m not sure that’s true in every case,’ Dex said.  
A shadow fell on the floor-panel next to Dex. It was the Finch, returning. ‘The batarians are all dead, or out cold and disarmed,’ she said.  
‘Good,’ Dex said, eyeing Karrean. The batarian still hadn’t said anything.  
‘And why did no-one tell us he was a biotic?’ the Finch added. ‘That’s a pretty basic bit of info there.’  
‘Shit,’ Krondesh said, with what sounded like realisation in his voice. In one movement he reached down and grabbed at one of the catches on the batarian’s helmet. It clicked free. Then he tugged the other.  
The helmet fell off, clanking onto the floor.  
And the angry four-eyed face glaring at them wasn’t Karrean’s.  
‘Oh crap,’ the Finch said. ‘The paranoid bastard. He put someone else in his suit!’  
Dex looked at the corpses strewn around the room. ‘Oh fuck,’ he said. ‘Which one of these is the actual Karrean, do you think?’  
The turian felt a sense of chagrin, accompanied by the burning realisation that he and his team had been played. It was humiliating! So close to success, only to have it yanked away.  
The stranger in front of them spoke, gloating in a guttural batarian accent. ‘He’s not here, bird. The boss is gone.’  
Dex took a deep breath, then released it. ‘Okay. You’re going to tell me where he’s gone.’  
The batarian shook his head. ‘No I won’t.’  
‘He isn’t paying you enough for this.’  
‘You can’t match the boss’s price.’  
‘Aria wants him,’ Dex said.  
The batarian blinked and his face paled.  
Dex added, ‘You’re definitely not being paid enough to go up against T’Loak.’ Improvising, he added, ‘She knows about the coup plot.’  
‘Shit,’ the batarian merc croaked.  
‘Yeah,’ Dex said. ‘Now, we have nothing personal against you. Aria’s hired us to reel your boss in. You were just in the way. Once we’ve disarmed you, we’ll let you go.’  
The batarian blinked. ‘Disarmed?’  
‘We’ll be taking all these guns,’ Dex said. ‘And your omnitool while we’re at it. Oh, and I hope you have some pants on underneath that suit, because if you don’t…’ He shrugged. ‘If you don’t, the next couple of hours are going to be a bit awkward for you.’  
All four of the merc’s eyes widened. ‘You total fuck,’ he said.  
‘We’re prepared to let you live,’ Dex told him. ‘Not everyone on this station would do that.’  
‘But we’re not stupid,’ the Finch put in. ‘And none of us want you turning up behind us with an M8. Understood?’  
The batarian sighed. ‘Okay, okay, okay. Can I at least keep my credit chit? Because if you take that as well, you might as well just shoot me.’  
It was true. The life expectancy of someone with no money wasn’t very high on Omega. It wasn’t like there was any sort of welfare system, after all.  
‘He might phone some heavily armed friends,’ Krondesh pointed.  
The merc sighed. ‘Not without an omnitool I won’t. And there are no public terminals in this part of the station. It’ll take me at least half an hour to get to somewhere with one. I guess you’ll be gone by then.’  
‘In that case, one more question. Is anyone with Karrean?’  
The merc nodded. ‘Two more Blue Suns. Karrean is wearing a suit with their colours – but it’s got better shields and plating then we get. So he won’t go down as easily as we did. He’s carrying a Mattock and a sub-machine gun. I think it’s a Shuriken model, but I’m not sure. His other guards just have M8s. None of them are biotics. When your drone dropped in they dived back into the control room, down the corridor there. Our orders were to move forward in case of an ambush, so he could get away. I don’t know where he is now. If you move, you might be able to catch him.’  
Dex nodded. ‘Okay, that’s enough information that we probably can justify letting you live. Krondesh, Finch – you know what to do.’  
‘Strip a batarian,’ the Finch muttered. ‘This is not one of my better days.’ Still, she and Krondesh got to work. They started by divesting the merc of his omnitool, then they got set on unstrapping those savage blades from him. As they removed each one, Krondesh and the Finch tossed them away. They went skittering and clanging across the floor. Dex kept them covered with his Phaeston; he had little trust for this merc, so he kept his finger on the trigger the whole time.  
They had the batarian down to his undersuit when Krondesh hesitated and then stopped work.  
'Are you sure we should let this guy go?' Krondesh asked. 'I mean, we only really have his word that he won't cause trouble.'  
Dex felt awkward. From a strictly military point of view, the krogan was right. With only the three of them, they couldn't post a guard on the junction room, and there would be nothing to stop the batarian doubling back after them. He could have another weapon hidden around here somewhere. On the other hand, shooting a defeated and disarmed enemy in the head was getting rather close to murder.  
'Well what do you propose to do?' the Finch demanded. 'Kill him in cold blood?'  
'Well yes,' Krondesh snarked. 'I can't really kill him in hot blood, can I, mammal? Slight anatomical difficulty there, I think you'll find.'  
'That wasn't what I meant,' she said.  
'I know what you meant,' Krondesh said. 'And for what it's worth, this guy can hardly complain.'  
The batarian eyed the krogan. Dex wasn't entirely sure, but he thought the batarian looked worried. Dex supposed the merc had good reason to look nervous.  
'You're threatening to randomly shoot him,' the Finch said. 'Under that circumstance I'd want to file a formal complaint too, you know.'  
'There'd be nothing random about this shooting,' Krondesh said. 'Anyway, this guy was taking Karrean's money. He wouldn't have any compunction about shooting us, you know. And for all we know, he might have been up to all sorts of nastiness. Mercs are rarely nice people. Perhaps he's a slaver. Or a rapist. Could be both. Even if he wasn't either, he's clearly seen violence. If he's killed other people, does he really have any complaint if it happens to him?'  
'That argument,' the Finch said, 'applies to you as well as it does him.'  
Dex tensed, half-expecting the krogan to explode. Instead, Krondesh just nodded. 'True,' he said, sounding calm. 'However, there's one relevant fact you've neglected. I currently have a gun. The batarian doesn't. And I'd like it to stay that way.' The krogan paused, then added, 'Also I'm part of an endangered species, and he isn't.'  
'So the genophage excuses everything, does it?' the Finch said. Her voice was ragged, raw and angry. She wasn't happy, Dex realised.  
'Be careful about making light of that,' Krondesh said, and this time there was nothing friendly in his voice.  
'The batarian here,' the Finch said, 'told us he won't be able to call anyone. So it's not like he can bring a load of friends down on us.'  
Krondesh sighed. 'He told us, mammal. He could be lying. We have no way of finding out, short of searching the area for terminals. Which we don't have time to do. Look, I understand your argument here. But I don't think you've thought this through. If you guess wrong here, we end up dead. And that can't be walked back.'  
The Finch was silent for a time. Overhead, the fans whirred in their housings. Behind them the wall plates clicked and creaked as they cooled down from the intense heat that the Finch's incinerating charge had supplied. She said, 'So is this what living on Tuchanka does to you?'  
Krondesh nodded. 'My people have to make these sorts of choices every day. Just to stay alive. That's the lot the galaxy has forced onto us. Now do you begin to see why I hate this system as much as I do?'  
'Can't we just ... knock him out? Or something?' There was a tone of hopeless resignation developing in her voice. She waved her hands emptily in the air.  
Dex realised it was his turn to say something. 'No,' he said. 'Head injuries ... they're not like in the vids. Bang someone over the head and you have a good chance of popping a blood vessel. Or bruising the brain. Or giving them concussion. If he gets concussed, he might vomit while unconscious. Drown in his own puke. Or he might end up with brain damage. Perhaps we'd be leaving behind a vegetable, to slowly die of dehydration in this room. You can't just tap someone on the skull and expect them to wake up fine.'  
'It wouldn't be better than just shooting him,' Krondesh said. 'In fact he might end up suffering more that way.'  
The batarian, Dex noticed, was starting to look very afraid. For a moment he tensed, as if he was about to do something.  
'Don't,' Dex told him. 'We haven't made up our minds to do it, yet. But if you force my hand...' He shrugged, shoulder plates rattling a little.  
'Could we drug him?' the Finch asked. 'Medigel has an anaesthetic in it. Perhaps that could put him to sleep?'  
'People don't always wake up from anaesthesia,' Dex said. 'Especially if you don't support their respiration when they go under. Plus he could have an allergic reaction or something. Hey, you're a scientist - shouldn't you know this stuff?'  
'I'm not a medical doctor,' the Finch said. 'You've handled my PhD thesis - you should know that!'  
'Also,' Krondesh said, 'the medigel we use to put him under is medigel we can't use on our own injuries. Just pointing that fact out.'  
The Finch sighed. 'Kat,' she said, 'would kill this guy without a second thought.'  
'Irrelevant,' Krondesh said. 'Kat's not here.'  
'This is a bad idea,' the Finch said. 'I vote no.'  
'I vote yes,' Krondesh said.  
The Finch said, 'I thought the point of democracy was settling disputes without resort to violence.'  
Apparently that was a bit too much for the batarian. 'Tell that to your foreign policy, human scum!'  
The Finch drew back. 'Hey,' she said. 'I'm the one who's been arguing to keep you alive here!'  
'Clearly this idiot has no grasp on practical politics,' Krondesh said. 'One more reason to shoot him. Plus fuck only knows how many krogan he's helped sell to the Collectors. And I don't see you saying anything about that, mammal.'  
The batarian glared at Krondesh. 'We wouldn't get much for you, worthless runt. There's no place in this galaxy for smart-arse krogan.'  
Dex cleared his throat and tapped the batarian with his foot. 'Apparently I have the casting vote here. And as such ... it would be a really good idea if you shut the fuck up about now. Because I'm starting to dislike you. On a personal as well as a professional level.'  
The batarian's eyes all widened. Apparently it dawned on him that he'd pushed it a little far. 'So I'm not even allowed to speak in my own defence, am I?'  
'You're doing a piss-poor job of it,' Krondesh said. 'As far as I'm concerned, please carry on!'  
The Finch sighed. 'Look, let me try one more argument,' she said, directly to Dex. 'This guy's a bastard. I agree that. He's also a dangerous bastard. I agree. And we only have his word that he wouldn't backstab us if we let him go. And there doesn't seem to be any plausible third option.'  
Overhead, the fans whirred. Dex took a deep breath, hearing the sigh inside his helmet.  
The Finch continued, 'So the logic seems to point in one direction, that being death. But, consider this. This is why no-one trusts anyone else in this galaxy. This is why we're always at each other's throats. The logic of violence leads to more violence. Since everyone knows that everyone else means them harm, no-one can trust.'  
'You're stating the obvious,' Krondesh said. But there was a hint of uncertainty in his voice, one that hadn't been there before.  
'Yes,' she said. A loosely-secured vent grating rattled somewhere above them. 'I am. But consider. Nothing's going to change until someone has the courage to start de-escalating. Someone has to choose to make the first move. Put the gun down, let someone live when you could have killed them. Just because you have power, it doesn't mean you have to use it.'  
'He's a batarian,' Krondesh said. 'They're no friends to your kind.'  
She shrugged. 'You're a krogan. Dex is a turian. By that logic, you should be shooting each other. Yet you're not.'  
'Still not convinced,' Krondesh said.  
The Finch looked toward Dex. 'What would the Turian Army do, in this situation?'  
Dex considered the question. 'They'd want any intelligence he could supply,' he said. 'If he co-operated, good. If he didn't ... well, then I suppose measures would be taken, until he started co-operating.'  
'How civilised,' Krondesh said.  
Dex felt an odd need to defend the army. 'There are procedures for everything,' he said.  
'Yes, you wouldn't want an undocumented corpse,' Krondesh agreed.  
That was awkwardly close to the truth. Dex winced.  
'What happens after?' the Finch said. 'After he's been beaten or sleep-deprived or whatever?'  
Dex considered it. 'If the war's over, he'd probably be released. If it's not, hard to say. The army isn't going to release someone who might take up arms against our troops again. And he might have gained some intelligence of his own while captive - people can talk out of turn! But keeping someone penned up for several years - well, food and water are expensive. And we could give that food and water to our own side. If he's not useful, I suppose the procedural and disciplined thing to do is shoot him. Like Krondesh said - stuff breaks in wars. It's not pretty, but that's how it is.'  
'Yes,' the Finch said. 'That's what the Army would do. Now consider this - I don't know all the details, but I gather you liked the Turian Army's behaviour so much that you walked out.'  
Dex stiffened. 'You -' He felt himself floundering. 'I -' He found himself thinking of the lieutenant, and what had happened to his unit. If the lieutenant had been here, this batarian would already be dead.  
'Shit,' he heard Krondesh say. 'Shit, shit, shit.'  
Inside his own mind, Dex was still floundering. He looked down at his Phaeston. He looked at the batarian. He looked up at the krogan and the human.  
'Shit,' Krondesh said again. The krogan sounded angry, disgusted and also miserable.  
The Finch looked at him. 'Also,' she said, 'I can use my omnitool to lock doors. The software overrides could be rolled back, of course, but it wouldn't happen instantly. If we let this guy go, we can make him stay away for at least a while.'  
'That doesn't stop him phoning friends if he's lying about the terminals,' Krondesh said.  
The Finch shrugged. 'It's the best I can do. I can't tell you whether he's lying or not. But, one more point?'  
'What?' Krondesh asked.  
'Suppose you were on the floor, and a salarian had their boot on your stomach ... how would you feel at that moment?'  
The krogan looked down, then up again. 'A salarian wouldn't show me any mercy, if that's what you're trying to suggest.' His tone was evasive and uncertain.  
The Finch pressed her point. 'What the salarian thinks isn't the issue here.'  
Krondesh was silent. He stood there in a solitary tableaux, motionless, apparently locked in contemplation. Above them, the fans whirred.  
Finally, the alien reptile's head turned in the Finch's direction. 'If you've called this wrong, mammal,' he said, 'then this is on your ass.'  
'Understood,' she said.  
Krondesh turned back to Dex. 'I'm changing my vote,' he said. 'I don't believe I'm saying this, but we let the batarian go after all.'  
Dex barely heard him. 'Good,' he heard himself say, voice thick with relief. 'I'm going to vote for the Finch's plan as well.' He lifted his boot off of the batarian's chest. 'Strip off, take your credit chit, and get out of here.'  
The batarian looked disbelieving, but he did what he was told.  
A few minutes later, the door was locked and bolted. The Finch gave it a final pass with her omnitool. 'It's as good as I can make it,' she said. 'He won't be getting back through that lock for a while.'  
'Unless he's got a pile of demolitions explosives somewhere,' Krondesh said.  
'That's not useful right now,' Dex said. 'We've spent enough time second-guessing ourselves. Let's go and get Karrean.'  
The junction room led onto another corridor. Karrean was somewhere at the end of it. The three ran down the corridor, boots thudding on the floor panels. Fat, groaning pipes ran along the ceiling above them and the walls were festooned with cables and lights. It was noisy in the corridor. As well as the ever-present rattle and whirr of the ventilation fans, there was the growing sound of the pumps themselves. Dex could feel it as well as hear it, an omnipresent thump-thump-thump shaking up through the floor under his boots.  
The pumps were loud.  
'Remember,' Dex said, raising his voice so he could be heard, 'we're looking for three guys in Blue Suns gear. At a guess they'll all be wearing helmets, so there'll be no easy giveaways about who's Karrean.'  
'I thought Kat didn't like the Blue Suns,' Krondesh said.  
'That's Kat,' Dex said. 'I guess Karrean has different tastes.'  
'There are a lot of batarians in the Blue Suns,' the Finch said. 'Myabe that's a factor too.'  
'Could be,' Dex agreed. 'But we have concerns other than his hiring choices right now.'  
'So,' Krondesh said, 'how are we going to do this? Are any of us good at not-killing people?'  
This was going to be a problem, Dex realised. Thinking quickly, he improvised. 'Krondesh - your shockwave is the weakest of your biotics, isn't it?'  
'Army boy, you can be really patronising sometimes.'  
'That wasn't a no.'  
The krogan sighed. 'Yeah, okay, I'm not really good at doing shockwaves. What of it?'  
'That's good,' Dex said.  
'Why?' The krogan sounded puzzled.  
'Because it means you can drop one on a group without necessarily killing them,' Dex said. 'And it means I have a plan.'  
'And that would be?' the Finch asked.  
'We force them to bunch up,' Dex said. 'The Finch and I can arrange that. I can herd them with a drone on one side. Finch, you can drive them from the other side with an incinerating blast.'  
'How does cooking them help?' she asked.  
'Fire it off to one side - like you did with that merc earlier.'  
'Oh,' she said. 'And of course they dodge the big scary fireball.'  
'Basically yes.' Dex took a breath. 'And once they're bunched up, Krondesh, you drop a shockwave on them. That should stun them - at least long enough for me to sabotage all their guns!'  
'And at that point they're basically helpless,' the Finch said.  
'To judge from this corridor,' Dex said, 'they've taken themselves off to the control room for the pumping station. That's good to a point as we can probably trap them in there.'  
'Unless there's another exit,' Krondesh said.  
'True,' Dex agreed. 'If there is, then we have to catch them first.'  
'We're coming up on an intersection,' the Finch said.  
Dex waved for them to slow down. He palmed another drone and tossed it ahead of them. This one was specced solely for surveillance. The drone disappeared around the side of the door.  
A grainy image appeared over Dex's omnitool.  
The drone had entered a large chamber. One side was given over entirely to the mechanisms of the pumps themselves. They were long, fat cylinders, sloping upwards into the ceiling. You could see the internal tubes through translucent windows in their sides. The tubes kept slamming up and down, in time to the deafening rhythm pounding through the floor. Beyond the pumps were the damp courses, although in this case 'damp' was an understatement. The collected condensation from the entire inner surface area of Omega was pouring down through chutes in the ceiling. Tons of water, descending in a constant thundering waterfall. The sound was incredible. It all cascaded into the vast cistern that formed the bottom of the room, before being drawn up into the cylindrical pipes of the pumps. A thick haze of spray hung over the entire scene.  
The drone was moving over a gantry, positioned halfway up the wall. At one end of the gantry a boxy metal-framed control room jutted out from the pumping chamber's walls. It was a decent-sized room, but it looked small compared to the massive chamber itself.  
'Look,' Krondesh said, pointing. 'Behind the glass. Movement!'  
The control room had windows looking out over the chamber itself. There were shapes behind them, roughly humanoid.  
'Well be pretty exposed on the way to the room,' the Finch said, sounding dubious. 'That gantry has no cover and it's fairly long. Lots of distance for them to gun us down over.'  
'Maybe I can use the drone to arrange a distraction,' Dex said, thinking quickly. 'Make them think they're under attack from a different side.'  
'What will you do?' Krondesh asked.  
'Hit the windows with the flamethrower,' Dex said. 'I doubt it will penetrate the glazing - I'm guessing that's armour-glass in there! But it will certainly make them jump.'  
'So that will give us a moment or two to run down the gantry,' the Finch said. 'We'll have to be quick.'  
Krondesh sighed. 'I guess we'd better hope your idea works, army boy.'  
Dex weighed the little lump of metal and circuitry in his gloved hand. 'Last drone,' he said.  
'Better make it count,' Krondesh said.  
Dex thumbed the drone's control pad and tossed it into the air. It sailed out through the doorway into the pumping chamber. Then its little eezo motor came to life. It zoomed off sideways, out of sight.  
Dex looked back at the holographic display. The drone was approaching the control room. He could see a blurry, zoomed-in view of the room's interior. A figure reacted to their presence, pointing.  
Dex tapped a glowing key on his omnitool. The image saturated with light as the drone's flamethrower came alive.  
'Okay,' he said. 'Now we run!'  
A moment later and his boots were pounding on the metal gangway. He felt it ringing under him. The sound was lost in the din. The repeating roar of the pumps was all consuming. A fine mist of spray floated over them. Erratic rainbows glimmered under the chamber's lights.  
Up ahead was the control room. The sooty orange glow of the drone's flame was spraying over one of the windows. A carbonised scar was forming around it. A fat heathaze played around it. Water vapour was hissing into steam all around the plume of fire as it dumped its heat into the air.  
The disturbance was huge. With luck, the people bottled up in the room couldn't see their attackers.  
There was a door at the end of the gangway. A moment more and Dex was up at it. He gestured Krondesh to one side of the door. The door's interface suggested it was locked, but Dex pointed at the Finch, then at it. She nodded. Her omnitool lit up over her gauntlet. Luckily she apparently knew what to do.  
The Finch set to hacking the door.  
After a moment, the lock's hologram wavered then blinked off. She turned her helmet toward Dex and raised five fingers. A count of five, Dex realised. Speech was redundant - none of them would have been able to hear anything over the roar of the water.  
Dex nodded and drew back. The Finch moved into the space beside Krondesh. The krogan looked at her, as if surprised.  
The door began to open.  
In the turian forces, Dex would have cleared the room by tossing a grenade through. That wasn't an option here - they needed Karrean alive. Somehow Dex suspected T'Loak's organisation might take a dim view of receiving a corpse. They clearly had reservations about his accusations and clearly wanted to talk to Karrean themselves. But they had a plan, and Dex now just had to hope that it would work.  
He gave the signal to move.  
The Finch leaned around the door and fired off an incendiary charge. The blob of burning fuel sailed through the air, throwing off a wobbly, shifting light. Dex ducked out behind it, Phaeston ready. He'd been planning to throw his drone through, but it was busy flaming the window.  
Instead, he hit one of the consoles with a burst of fire.  
Observe and orient - he took a quick look at what was in the room before ducking back. There were three armoured figures, in merc blue and white colours. Two of them had M8 Avengers. One had the distinctive shape of a Mattock rifle. The Mattock-carrier also had bluish tech armour fields glowing over his gear.  
Dex ducked back before they saw him.  
The merc with the tech armour, Dex guessed, must be Karrean. He'd done a nice job of undermining his own disguise. What Dex had heard of the man suggested arrogance and a commitment to displays of his own power - it fitted together. Probably just putting himself in merc colours had been as much of a debasement as Karrean could stand. Carrying the same gun would have been a step too far.  
Dex brought up his Phaeston and leaned back around the door.  
He could have shot at the people in the room. However, that risked defeating the object of this exercise. Instead, he hit one of the consoles with a burst of fire. The gun rattled in his hands.  
A shower of sparks erupted.  
The nearest merc staggered away. With the momentary distraction, Dex brought his omnitool up. There was no time to do a custom scan for open network connections. Instead, it broadcast a pre-written piece of viral code. This one could attack standard ports, if they were open. It did unfriendly things to the hardware drivers associated with thermal clips.  
From around the door frame, Dex saw two flares of light. Two sabotaged thermal clips, erupting.  
He gestured to Krondesh.  
The krogan lit up with biotic energy. A shockwave erupted from him, into the room. Dex actually heard it over the roar of the water.  
Dex gave it two moments, then waved the others to move forward.  
It was chaos inside the control room. One of the Blue Suns lay flopped on the floor, off to one side. He was sprawled over a fallen chair. It wasn't clear if he was just unconscious or dead. The other one was struggling to get back to his feet. Karrean was still on his, but his movements were dazed. Apparently Krondesh's shockwave had left him dazed.  
Dex attacked.  
Karrean tried to bring up his Mattock. The gun's barrel weaved drunkenly in the air. Dex swatted it away with his free hand. Then he punched Karrean once, his own shields sparking and flaring as his fist collided with the tech armor.  
Karrean stumbled and fell over.  
Abruptly the sound of the waterworks dropped away. The Finch had closed the door. Dex looked down. Karrean was reaching for his rifle. Dex kicked it away. He levelled his Phaeston. 'Don't move,' he barked.  
Over on the other side of the room, the remaining merc was struggling with Krondesh. The krogan had got hold of both of the merc's arms. The merc, apparently misinterpreting what Krondesh was doing, was trying to bring his rifle to bear. The merc apparently thought what was what Krondesh was trying to do was disarm him. Guessing what was coming, Dex braced himself.  
The krogan had wrestled the merc's arms out of the way. He had a clear aim at the batarian's head.  
There was a loud crack. The merc groaned and went limp.  
'One headbutt delivered,' Krondesh said, sounding satisfied.  
'You sound like you enjoyed that,' the Finch said.  
'I did,' Krondesh said. 'Granted it's pandering to the stereotypes, but it was quite satisfying all the same.'  
The merc made a pained groan from the floor.  
'Oh do shut up,' Krondesh told him.  
Dex noted that the front of the man's helmet had been crumpled in and there was a crack running between the eyelenses. That helmet was probably the only reason the merc was still alive. Headbutting krogan were not noted for being gentle. As for Krondesh's helmet, the only sign of damage was some scuffed paint. Krogan gear was reinforced in all the right places, Dex supposed.  
He looked back to Karrean. 'Finch,' he said, 'can you get-'  
He didn't finish. Karrean moved his arm. His tech armour exploded. Dex was thrown back.  
He hit the floor with a thud. The sound echoed in the room. This time, he just barely hung onto his Phaeston. Pain surged through the injury in his side again.  
Karrean leapt at the door.  
Dex rolled to his feet. He brought his gun up -  
There was a thud. The entire room rattled.  
'Got him,' Krondesh said.  
The krogan had reacted faster than Dex could. He'd tackled Karrean to the ground. The thud Dex had felt and heard was the pair of them hitting the ground.  
There was a grunt. Karrean tried to throw a punch. The krogan swatted it aside. 'Nice try, four eyes,' Krondesh growled.  
Karrean reached for his gun.  
There was a rattle. The krogan threw away Karrean's rifle. It landed near Dex's feet. Dex planted a boot on it.  
Krondesh thumped Karrean on the head. The batarian went limp. 'I think he's done now,' Krondesh reported. 'I'm going to keep sitting on him, though. Just until we're sure he's out.'  
Dex nodded at the Finch. 'Finch, could you pull his helmet off? Let's make sure we have the right batarian.'  
She did as he requested.  
It was indeed Karrean, and he was unconscious. There was a big bruise along the side of his head where Krondesh had smacked him.  
'He's breathing,' the Finch reported, 'but that's an ugly bruise there.'  
Krondesh shrugged with a rattle of shoulder plates. 'Couldn't be helped,' he said.  
'I wasn't criticising,' the Finch said, 'just observing.'  
'The sooner we get him to Afterlife,' Dex said, 'the better.'  
But still, he felt a moment of triumph. They'd done it. They actually had Karrean!


	16. Sins of the Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the action, a turian, a krogan and a human conclude that they need some drinks. A batarian is taken away to answer some questions. Files are exchanged.
> 
> And the past is re-visited. Many questions are raised and few conclusive answers are found.
> 
> But, two unexpected truths are revealed…

Bray, as it turned out, was another batarian. Dex's deduction had been accurate. For a moment the turian was worried that Bray might be tempted to side with another member of his own species. However he showed little if any sympathy for Karrean, merely glancing at the unconscious form that Dex and Krondesh had dragged into Afterlife. Aria's lieutenant gestured at a couple of flunkies hanging around in the background.  
'Take him below,' Bray said.  
Karrean was collected and dragged off.  
'Well?' Dex asked.  
Bray shrugged with a rattle of armour. 'That depends,' he said, 'on what your new friend has to say. Assuming he wakes up. You thumped him pretty good.'  
Dex sighed. 'Well it wasn't like he was entirely co-operative.'  
'True.' Bray nodded. 'You might want to stick around. We could want to talk to you later.'  
That sounded ominous. Still, Dex supposed that neither he nor his companions had anything to hide. And he felt like he could do with a drink.  
Krondesh appeared at Dex's shoulder. 'Give him the rest of the files,' the krogan said.  
'There are more?' Bray didn't sound entirely surprised.  
Dex looked at the Finch. She shrugged. 'Probably now is as good a time as any,' she said.  
Dex turned back to Bray. 'We held the more sensational stuff,' he said. He called up his omnitool. 'Karrean and Kat had all sorts of schemes hatched up.'  
'Like doing deals with Collectors wasn't enough?' Bray asked.  
Dex said, 'Actually that's not the end of it. She and he were planning a coup against Aria. If you want to ask him about that too, here's your chance.'  
'You lot are full of surprises,' Bray said, sounding sour.  
'Here's the transfer,' Dex said. For a moment he thought Aria's lieutenant might defer, but Bray brought his omnitool up anyway. Dex sent the transfer across.  
Bray took it, but didn't look at it. All he had to say was, 'We'll review this.' Then he walked off.  
Dex, Krondesh and the Finch were left standing on the floor of Upper Afterlife, below T'Loak's office. Music swirled around them, loud. With it came the sounds of people drinking, dancing and laughing. It was warm and close in Afterlife. The air had a distinct scent of alcohol and sweat. Too much energetic gyration on the dance floor, Dex supposed.  
'Well,' he said, 'I guess now we wait.'  
'There's a free booth over there,' the Finch said, pointing.  
A few moments later, a turian, a krogan and a human were sat in one of the booths. They were in the far corner of the room, where it was relatively quiet. Dex dropped his helmet down on the table. It landed with a clank. There probably wasn't any great need for concealment now. Krondesh and the Finch had done likewise.  
'Remember that batarian?' Krondesh said. 'At the pumping station? I wonder if he made it out?'  
Dex shrugged. 'Not our problem.' In the end they had left the batarian with the undersuit to his armour, as well as the credit chit, so he wasn't actually walking around naked. However amusing the idea of a nude batarian may have been, Dex had to acknowledge that it would have been a somewhat mean-spirited thing to do.  
Suddenly the Finch leaned forward. 'Krondesh,' she said, 'you said you didn't have an omnitool.'  
'Yes,' Krondesh said. 'I'm not made of money, mammal.'  
'Here.' She handed him something.  
Krondesh looked at it. 'That's the batarian's tool,' he said.  
She nodded. 'A generic Aldrin Labs Bluewire.'  
'That's a human company,' Krondesh said, sounding surprised.  
She nodded. 'At a guess he took it off of some poor unfortunate victim. Wouldn't be the first time a batarian merc's had a past life as a slaver. Least of all on this station.'  
Dex said, 'I remember we used to run into them. My unit was assigned to a ship for a time. It went on patrol in the Traverse.'  
'How did you deal with them?' Krondesh asked.  
'With a gun,' Dex said. 'If we came across them we'd give them one warning. Standard Hierarchy rules. If they didn't surrender their ship for inspection...' He shrugged. 'Bang. Count the bodies, gather what intel we could, then file a report.'  
'You could have shot that guy,' Krondesh noted.  
Dex nodded, thinking of the prisoner they’d voted not to execute. 'I could have, yes. I wouldn't have enjoyed it, but yes, I could've done it.'  
Dex was entering into the post-combat hangover phase. He found himself thinking of all the people they’d shot and killed at the pumping station. Did all of them really deserve it? Was all this really worth the suffering? Were Kat and Karrean actually a genuine threat to the station, or were they just two deluded greedy nutcases?  
Dex felt his mandibles flex. He really needed a drink. The beat of the music pounded through the floor under his boots.  
Krondesh had picked up the omnitool, and was busy fitting it into his gauntlet. ‘I still don’t know if we made the right choice,’ he said. ‘We might run into the guy again. He might be out for revenge. Half measures don’t always work.’  
'That's pretty cold-blooded,' the Finch said. ‘Are you really sure you could have done it, Dex?’  
Dex shrugged. 'Self-discipline means you're able to do difficult things,' he said. 'If you're ordered to. Command is its own justification. The leader must have the power to implement his program – otherwise else chaos will descend. Or at least that's what the Hierarchy says. Supposedly that’s the lesson we learned from the Unification Wars. I have to admit I'm starting to wonder about that, though. Is it really right to do something unpleasant, just because you're told to? Even if it is by someone who outranks you? We learnt a lesson, but was it the right one?'  
The Finch gave him a strange expression, then shook her head. 'I was about to say something about the Nuremberg defence,' she said. 'But I guess that's our history, not yours. And I suspect it wouldn’t mean much to you if I did say it.’  
'Ah, there we go,' the krogan said. The omnitool blinked into life around his wrist. 'I wonder how I set up an account on this thing...'  
'Here, let me help,' the Finch said. She reached over. Krondesh offered her his wrist so she could fiddle with the omnitool's settings.  
While they were busy, Dex went to get a drink. For this time of day, Afterlife seemed surprisingly busy. While Dex was waiting to order he listened in on a few of the conversations. It took his mind off of his own moral dissonance. Nearby a couple of salarians were gesticulating and talking fast, as they were prone to. Apparently one of the station's habitation cylinders had been put under quarantine due to some sort of disease outbreak. Both of them apparently had homes down there, and they were vocally-disgusted to be stuck up here in the main station. Dex filed the news item away, noting to himself to find out which. He supposed it was best to avoid whichever one it was.  
Dex finally managed to get the bartender's attention. He ordered a turian ale. It was fairly weak, alcoholically, but it would give him something to drink. It arrived in short order. Even a small amount of alcohol should hopefully interrupt his cycle of post-combat introspection.  
A few moments later and he was back at the table. Krondesh was peering at a news broadcast. Apparently the omnitool was up and running now. His wedge-shaped face was lit up by the glow of its holographic screen.  
'Apparently there's some sort of disease on the loose,' Dex said.  
Without looking up, Krondesh said, 'Cylinder Six. In particular the residential area. It's been going on for a while now but apparently it's made the jump to an actual epidemic down there.'  
The Finch sighed and shook her head. 'This is what you get when you have no public health infrastructure,' she said.  
'A bad cough?' Dex asked.  
'Apparently a bit worse than that,' Krondesh said. 'These death statistics look pretty grim, actually.' He looked at the Finch. 'Funny thing is, I'm not seeing any numbers for humans in here.'  
She rolled her eyes. 'Don't look at me, lizard.'  
' "Lizard" ?'  
'If you're going to keep calling me a mammal, I'm going to start calling you a lizard,' she said. 'It's not really accurate but it'll do.'  
'Don't I at least rate "dinosaur"?' Krondesh asked.   
'They're extinct,' she said.  
'Ouch.' The krogan winced. Then he threw a ritual glare in Dex's direction. 'Well, thanks to our bird and frog friends, we will be soon enough. So it's probably apt.'  
'Well in that case let's not go to Cylinder Six, then,' Dex said. 'No point helping the genophage along, is there?'  
Krondesh blinked. 'That almost sounded like you criticising it.'  
Dex was silent for a time. Then he said, 'Officially in the Hierarchy, it's uncontroversial. At school and training they tell you it was the only thing that could've been done. And that's the government line. But in private...' He sipped his ale, then put the glass down. It clanked on the tabletop. 'In private people aren't always so sure. There aren't many things where most turians will discuss state policy. That's normally completely off-limits. But I don't think many people are really comfortable with the genophage.'  
The Finch looked like something was bothering her. She opened her mouth, then closed it again.  
'What?' Krondesh asked.  
She sighed. 'I shouldn't ask.'  
'Spit it, mammal.'  
She leaned back. The acrylic fabric of the seat cushions squeaked under her. 'What about birth control?' she asked. 'I mean ... I get that you're K-strategy breeders. I get that you're biased toward high reproduction rates. But, is that not an option for some reason?'  
Krondesh sighed. 'Mammal,' he said, 'prophylactics and rhythms and terminations are perfectly workable. There's no biological bar to it. We're just not trusted to regulate our own breeding. Or at least, the birds and the frogs and the squid-heads don't trust us to regulate it.' He shot Dex a glare, but there wasn't any real heat in it.  
'That’s shit,' the Finch said.  
'Quite,' Krondesh agreed. 'Of course, if you ask the frogs why they did what they did, they'll tell you it's okay because they could have done worse. And I suppose it's true. If you can do something complicated and subtle like the genophage, you could probably also just make us extinct too.'  
The Finch shuddered, but she also looked thoughtful. 'Yeah,' she said. 'I'm not a biologist but from what I know of DNA and cell division ... yeah, it sounds like it would be easier just to shut fertilisation down entirely.'  
Krondesh said, 'This way it's a little bit deniable. They don't have to admit that they've pushed us over the edge. After all, we're still here! And complaining. And sometimes the odd egg even hatches, once in a while.'  
Dex felt uncomfortable. On the one hand, he personally wasn't responsible for the existence of the genophage. And during the Rebellions, the krogan war machine had done the galaxy a huge amount of damage. Worlds ruined, economies in tatters, a death toll in the billions. And alternatives had been tried. Concessions, negotiations and even conventional warfare had been attempted one after the other, and each successive solution had failed. But one still had to wonder - had they been tried hard enough? Had there been some other approach that had been passed over or ignored? After the Rebellions the other peoples of the galaxy had rebuilt, but the krogan no longer had any future. Had their punishment been proportionate to the crime?  
'At one time,' Dex said, looking at his ale, 'I would simply have agreed with policy. Of course it was right - how could the primarchs order something that wasn't? But now ... I'm honestly no longer sure.'  
'Self-awareness from a turian,' Krondesh said. 'My, today is full of surprises.'  
Dex took another deep draught of ale. He felt like he needed it.  
The Finch looked like she was having a bad case of conflicting motivations.  
'What?' Krondesh asked her.  
She shook her head. 'I know I shouldn't ask. It's none of my business.'  
'You're wondering what it's like, aren't you?'  
She nodded, and sighed. 'I'm in my forties. Post menopause. I didn't start a family when I could have.'  
'Could have?' Krondesh asked.  
'Well,' she said, 'technically with modern medical tech, I probably still could now. But it would take all sorts of interventions. It wouldn't happen naturally. We - female humans, I mean - stop being fertile after a certain age.'  
Krondesh looked puzzled. 'That's weird.'  
'Not really,' she said. 'Before civilisation, the average life expectancy was much shorter. As recently as the Bronze Age, living past twenty-six was statistically abnormal. Admittedly a lot of that would have been infant mortality. But we're pretty hardcore r-strategisers. Human offspring are usually born one at a time, and they're basically helpless.'  
'Only one at a time?' Krondesh asked. 'We lay clutches. Dozens of eggs, in one go.'  
'Twins aren't unknown,' the Finch said. 'And nor are triplets. But anything beyond that's seriously pushing it. I recall having heard of one case of octets - eight babies! - born live. But that was an exceptional case. There's an issue with the size of the baby's head versus the size of the birth canal. The latter's got as large as it can for us, because if the hips got any wider, we wouldn't be able to walk properly anymore. But it's still not wide enough. Before modern medicine, having children could be pretty risky.' Her eyes widened. She shuddered. 'Seriously, if you ever want proper body horror, forget about the shock-vids. Reading a Victorian novel with a childbirth scene - eurgh!' She shuddered again and this time, the convulsion was bigger. 'And it's asymmetric, of course. Our males don't get this - well, let's not even go there. Suffice to say there can be a real gap of understanding. There's part of me that would have liked to have started a family, but there's also another part of me that's frankly shit-scared of the idea. In the end I felt I could make a better contribution to society through my scientific career. So that’s what I did.'  
'You ... can't do both?' Dex asked.  
'Supposedly yes, you can,' the Finch said. 'But there are all sorts of difficulties. Even now, in the modern age. But that's getting pretty far into human internal gender politics, which is a weird place even for us. I gather when it comes to this sort of stuff, turian society is much better organised.'  
'But you had the option,' Krondesh said. ‘If you’d chosen to, it was anatomically-possible for you to have children.’  
She nodded. 'That's true. It was my choice not to.'  
‘Well, for most of us, the choice doesn’t exist.’ For a moment the alien reptile fell silent. Music thump-thump-thumped up through the floor. Nearby, somebody dropped a glass. There was a tinkle and shouts of surprise. A smell of alcohol and fruit drifted lazily through the air.  
The Finch said nothing.  
Krondesh appeared to make a judgement. 'As to what it's like,' he said to her, 'it's shit.'  
Dex blinked, wondering for a moment what the krogan was talking about. Then Dex remembered that Krondesh was talking about the genophage.  
The krogan said, 'There's a nightmare lots of us have. Talk to almost any krogan, and I guarantee you she or he's had it at some point.'  
From nearby was the sound of a brush scraping, and the clinking of little fragments of glass. Apparently the drink-breakers had found a dustpan and brush form somewhere. One of the cleaner-uppers called another one a rude name.  
The Finch blinked. 'What is it?'  
Krondesh said, 'We don't get old the way most species do. Pre-industrial Tuchanka was pretty lethal. There was never any need for any kind of senescence. The problem isn't getting tired obsolete genes out of the pool. Rather it was keeping enough of the good ones in the pool in the first place - and not in a maw's stomach, or something.' He shook his head. 'It's really fucked up, when you think about it, but technically we're prey animals, you know. I seem to recall reading a human article somewhere where they compared us to - what was it? - "rab-ets"?'  
'Rabbits,' the Finch said. She looked at Krondesh, running her eyes up and down. 'Wow. That's Tuchanka's idea of what a fucking rabbit looks like. Fuck.'  
'Well,' Krondesh amended, 'we're prey animals insofar as that designation applies to anything on Tuchanka. Everything hunted something, even the herbivores. And believe me, we do eat meat!'  
'It’s true,’ Dex agreed. ‘I've seen him do it. And he does like his food.’  
The krogan glared at him, but Krondesh didn’t dignify that jibe with a reply.  
'So ... you have nightmares about being predated on?' the Finch asked.  
Dex couldn’t help a small shudder and a reflexive jerk of the mandibles. That was not a nice thing to have dreams about!  
Krondesh said, 'Sometimes. But it wasn't that I was thinking of. That sort of nightmare is perfectly natural. And probably healthy for us. No, it's the other sort that the genophage has given us.'  
'And that would be...?'  
'We don't get old,' Krondesh said. 'And we don't tend to get ill. Or at least not as easily as the rest of you do. I might die of many things, but it won't be the quarian sniffles.'  
'Particularly as they're dextro,' Dex had to point out.  
'It was a rhetorical device, army boy,' Krondesh sniffed. 'You just don't get the idea of verbal flourishes, do you? Bloody illiterate bird. Anyway, I was saying ... we don't get old and we don't really get sick. We can eat pretty much anything, so starvation is fairly unusual in practise. The main causes of death are accidents and violence.'  
'Okay,' the Finch said. 'So you have nightmares about dying violently?'  
Dex felt he was missing something, but he supposed violent demise was a valid concern for krogan.  
'No,' Krondesh said. 'In fact a lot of us would probably welcome a warrior’s death. In fact until recently that was probably me as well.' He gave Dex a good-natured glare. 'Apparently army boy here's made it his life's mission to talk me out of my deathwish. And it looks like he might be succeeding.'  
Dex boggled. Was that an acknowledgement of gratitude - from Krondesh? Had someone swapped their krogan when he hadn’t been looking?  
'So what is it then?' the Finch asked.  
Krondesh said, 'The thing we all have nightmares about? Well, that would being the last.'  
'The last what?' the Finch asked.  
'The last krogan,' Krondesh said. 'It's not impossible for any one of us. All the demographic curves are pointed downwards. More of us die than are hatched. Granted there are a lot of us, so it won't happen overnight. But unless the frogs change their minds or something...' He shrugged. 'It is possible that any one of us might be the last krogan. Imagine what that does to you. That the most you have to look forward to, is being the one who gets to put up all your friends' tombstones.'  
The Finch looked haunted. ‘Shit,' she said quietly.  
‘There’s also another issue,’ Krondesh said. ‘We don’t even know if the frogs can change their minds. People keep having a crack at the genophage every now and then. There was that madman, Saren. There was a company who were hired a couple of years ago to look at it. None of them managed anything real. Perhaps it’s permanent? Perhaps what they did is irreversible? Maybe there’s no way back? I don’t have the science to even begin to answer that. But those nights when you can’t sleep, when it’s dark and quiet? Guess what you find in the back of your mind when you’re all alone with your thoughts? Is it a wonder that people might prefer the certainty of death against the hopelessness of a life like that?’  
‘That’s horrible,’ the Finch said.  
'Quite,' Krondesh agreed. 'And history is no comfort here. We know extinction's a possibility. Fifty thousand years ago, someone somewhere was the last prothean. Imagine what that must have felt like.'  
It occurred to Dex that he could just as equally ask what the last rachni must have felt like. He had a suspicion that the question would do more harm than good, though. He held his silence, although he did feel a guilty twitch of the tell-tale mandibles. Luckily Krondesh’s eyes were intent on the Finch, so he didn’t notice the little spasm.  
'We don't even know what happened to them,' the Finch said. 'The lack of records tends to suggest it was fast, whatever it was.'  
'Either that or whoever did the deed came along and swept up after themselves,' Krondesh said. 'When we're gone, that's what I expect will happen to us. The genophage is just deniable enough that everyone can blame us for it. Gotta love the good old victim-blaming! After all, it's obviously our fault for taking dangerous jobs like mercs and bodyguards. If we stopped that, we'd have a lower death rate, and it would all be fine again!' He snorted. 'Except there are no other jobs for us. I've seen what happens to krogan who try to find a way out of that trap. I imagine when we're gone there'll be a few years of "Oh, it's so terrible!". Some extranet articles about what a sad tragedy, but it was their own fault for not changing, and so on. And then people will do their best to forget we were ever there. And then I imagine there'll be quiet meetings in private rooms in various places. Couldn't have the public made to feel bad about themselves, after all. And the krogan are gone now, so it's not like there's anyone left to complain. And then the airbrushing will start. Maybe they'll close Tuchanka to traffic - it is dangerous, after all! Some school curricula get edited - no point having irrelevant content, after all. No need to talk so much about extinct species. The vids don't run some shows, because no demand. And within a few generations, it'll be like we never even existed.'  
The honest truth was, the krogan looked miserable.  
'All that,' Dex said, 'and your clan still threw you out. That's fucking criminal.'  
Krondesh met his eyes. 'Something else I didn't mention,' he said. 'About my brother.'  
Dex's mandibles moved. 'What was that?'  
'He was fertile,' Krondesh said. 'I'm not. There are tests you can do, you see. Hormones and stuff.'  
'Had he...?' The Finch clearly felt it was indelicate to finish the question.  
Krondesh shook his head. 'No. No visits to the other camp till after the Rite takes place. Well, not everyone follows the rule, of course. But my brother was very well-behaved. I think really, that's what Alrateg was looking for.'  
'A minion,' Dex said.  
Krondesh scowled, but he nodded. 'Basically yes. Or someone to do his dirty work for him.'  
'And a fertile one,' Dex said, some grim ideas floating into his mind. 'Could that be a factor as well?'  
Krondesh’s face twisted into a growl.  
'Oh Christ,' the Finch said, sounding a little ill. 'So this Alrateg was basically planning on ... yuck. Why would anyone stand for that? That’s disgusting!'  
Krondesh eyed her for a moment, before apparently reaching a decision. 'Alrateg was the Battlemaster my brood-brother was apprenticed to,' he said. 'That's a big thing in our society. I don't know if there's anything in any of your societies that it really maps to. Knight and squire, possibly.'  
The Finch looked astonished, then shook her head. 'Sometimes you seem to know us better than I know us.'  
Krondesh shrugged. 'Reading books is good. Seriously, people should do more of it. Anyway, my brother had to take his Rite of Passage before he could actually start serving under Alrateg. I was on the team, with some others. Army boy here knows the broad outline of the story. Basically, it all went wrong, everyone else died. I survived, and for my trouble I got blamed.' He pointed at the purple headplates. 'That's why I have these.'  
'A mark of shame,' the Finch said. ‘Scapegoating.’  
Krondesh nodded.  
An awkward silence descended. They were surrounded by the noise of the club. Dex sipped some more of his ale. He noted that he was already a third of the way through it. While Krondesh talked, he’d been taking lots of little sips. A sense of alcoholic warmth was sitting comfortably on top of his own troubles. They weren’t gone, exactly, they just felt remote.  
Of course, it occurred to Dex that in a way, all three of them had their own pain. He had his doubts about everything in his life, and his doubts about whether he was really any kind of good person. Krondesh was living in the awkward place of a man smart enough to know just how utterly screwed he was. The Finch was faced with the utter disaster that her chosen career had turned into, a disaster that had almost got her murdered and had left her stranded here.  
Krondesh poked at his new omnitool. 'Hey look,' he said. 'Apparently that mad turian sniper's added a few more to his count.'  
'What?' The Finch looked confused. 'Oh, you're looking at the news.'  
'Which mad turian sniper?' Dex asked. 'It can't be me. With my Mantis gone, I'm a bit out of the sniping business.'  
Krondesh glanced up. 'Archangel,' he said. 'Apparently he's a bird. Other than that, no-one seems to know anything about him.'  
'Oh, that guy,' Dex said. Archangel's trail of assassinations had started making the station's news a few months ago. The guy seemed to be on a one-turian crusade to clean up Omega's criminals, by murdering all the ones who crossed his path. Dex had to admit to being rather cynical about the effectiveness of murder as a crime-fighting strategy. That said, a lot of the people who'd been shot probably did have it coming, so there was that aspect to the affair as well. Other than that, he hadn't been paying very much attention to the Archangel affair. Dex was wildly unlikely to cross paths with the man, so there wasn't any real reason to care about it.  
'Apparently a load of merc groups are planning on taking him down,' Krondesh said. 'In fact they've apparently booked out a room here in Afterlife, where they're hiring people.'  
'Why, are you after a new job?' Dex asked.  
Krondesh snorted. 'Not a chance. The last thing I'm interested in being is ventilated by a turian.'  
'I wonder who this Archangel is,' the Finch said. 'Anyone know any theories?'  
Dex shrugged. 'I hadn't been paying it much mind. I've been much too busy with other stuff.'  
Krondesh kept poking at the omnitool. 'No idea. Don’t really care, either. Oh, another human colony's vanished.’  
'Which one?' the Finch asked.  
'Somewhere called Freedom's Progress,' Krondesh said.  
The Finch shook her head. 'Whoever named that place needs a slap,' she said.  
'You seem rather blasé about it,' Krondesh said.  
‘I don’t recognise the name, so it doesn’t relate to anyone I actually know.’ She sighed. 'Wouldn't surprise me if it was another of these colonial insurance frauds. Pick an isolated and hard-to-get-to planet. Cook up some photos of a settlement and fake receipts for all the prefabs. Get some idiot bank to underwrite the whole thing for a few million credits. Then claim it's mysteriously vanished - and oh calamity! Oh horror! Now can we have our five million in insurance cash, please?' She snorted. 'Wouldn't be the first time someone's tried that.'  
'I remember discussing a similar idea with Kat,' Dex said, 'back when she showed me the Black Widow. She said the gun had been found on one of the cleaned-out colonies.'  
'And that shows what a liar she is,' the Finch said. 'A state of the art, military-grade gun? Left lying around by raiders? Fat chance of that.'  
Krondesh was still looking down at his omnitool. 'Here's another bit of human news,' he said. 'There are some people saying Commander Shepard's not actually dead after all. Apparently she's been seen running around in the Terminus Systems.'  
The Finch sighed. 'Yeah, little-known fact. She's spent the last couple of years hiding in a dodgy flat in King’s Cross. Sharing with Elvis and Jesus.'  
'I've never heard of a planet called King’s Cross,' Dex said.  
'It's not a planet, it's a district in - oh, never mind. I was being flippant, not serious.'  
'And who is Elvis?' Dex added, perplexed.  
The Finch rolled her eyes but didn't answer.  
'So what do you think she has been doing the last few years?' Krondesh asked.  
'Up to no good, no doubt,' the Finch said. 'Frankly, I never liked this Spectre business. Not something we should have been getting involved with in any way, in my opinion. The Alliance military is a bit too independent-minded as things stand. Do you know, apparently during the Battle of the Citadel, they didn't even try to consult with the government? Even once the comm bouys were open again. And putting Anderson on the Council – now that was a naked bit of partisan politics if I’ve ever seen it! Putting one of their own near where the money is. And he was still a serving office at the time, too! The whole thing was a constitutional disgrace.'  
'I wasn't paying it any attention,' Dex said. 'As I recall, about then I was a bit busy. Being shot at by geth.'  
'Well they didn't,' the Finch said. 'Makes a mockery of any idea of civilian control of the military.'  
Krondesh met Dex's eyes. 'I told you she had separatist sentiments,' he said.  
'Score one to you,' Dex said.  
An idea appeared occurred to Krondesh. 'Hey,' he said, 'you two have raked over all my dirty laundry, army boy, so let's do some of yours!'  
Dex felt a sudden unease. Through the overhead speakers, the music track fell quiet for a moment as the VI swapped its sets. A new rhythm began to pound out, throbbing up through the floor.  
'They're bound to have your mugshot on the Hierarchy's most wanted,' Krondesh said. He started poking keys on his omnitool.  
'Uh,' Dex said. What the hell was the krogan doing?  
'Here's the site,' the Finch said, leaning over to look at Krondesh's screen.  
Krondesh started typing. 'Decarius Illyrian Sempronius,' he said. 'Let's see what that matches.'  
Dex realised his mouth was dry and his mandibles were preternaturally still.  
'Oh,' Krondesh said. 'Nothing.'  
'No matches,' the Finch said. She looked up at Dex. 'Congratulations, I assume? Apparently the Hierarchy doesn't know you're missing.'  
'I -' Dex began, then stopped. He swallowed. The music swirled around him. What were they doing? What was this? Why was this happening?   
'That won't find anything,' he heard himself say.  
'It's not your name, is it?' Krondesh asked.  
'I think you already know the answer to that,' Dex said.  
Krondesh nodded, then shook his head. 'Shall we say I know the parameter space the answer is in?' The alien’s eyes were astute and they gleamed in a knowing manner.  
Dex wondered how much he could trust these two. Could he actually tell them the truth about who he was? The habit of years, which had become the habit of a new lifetime, hung heavily over him. Was it wise to break that?  
Strangely, he found that he wanted to.  
He heard himself say, 'You might find something under Platoon Sergeant Decimus Alurian Sempronius, though. Armiger Legion, Combat Engineering Corps, Sixth Company, Third Platoon. The indictment will have Second Lieutenant Octavius Kresius Quirinian as prime witness.'  
His mouth was as dry as sand.  
Krondesh's stubby fingers moved over the keypad.  
Then Krondesh frowned. 'Maybe I misspelt it,' he muttered. He glanced up at Dex. 'Just to check - do you have any funny spellings in your names?'  
Dex shook his head. He spelt them out phonetically anyway. He wondered what was going on.  
Krondesh tapped at the keys again, then shook his head once more. 'No,' he said. 'Nothing. And I've looked specifically under the deserters tab, too. You're not listed on here.'  
'What?' Dex was baffled. 'That can't be correct. You are on the right site, I assume?'  
'Yes,' Krondesh said.  
'Interesting,' the Finch said.  
'But...' Dex was baffled. 'The Hierarchy doesn't give up on deserters. Ever.'  
Krondesh looked thoughtful. 'I can't bring myself to think that army boy here would be lying about his story.'  
'Lying - but - what - how dare you?' Dex almost exploded. What an outrage! Airing all his pain like this – to be accused of lying?  
He realised he’d half-risen out of his seat. His hands were clutched on the edge of the table, talons raking into the plastic surface. His mandibles had flared out. His chest was tight and his breathing was hard and fast. Spots danced at the edge of his vision.  
The Finch was staring. She’d flinched backward and had brought her own hands up, all those unnecessary extra digits fully extended as if to ward him off.  
Krondesh was unintimidated. Instead he just nodded. 'Yes. That's the reaction of someone who's genuinely infuriated. If it's an act, it's a bloody good one. And when we talked about this outside the hull, he really did sound properly ashamed.'  
Dex forced himself to relax, trying to breathe more slowly. He released the edge of the table, settling back into his seat.  
'But he's still missing from the wanted list,' the Finch said. 'Could they - could they be holding his name back?'  
Krondesh shook his head. 'The Turian Army never does that. It's a social pressure thing. Shaming individual deserters publically also shames their friends and their gens. The people who might hide you or help you otherwise. Abandoning your post is an unforgivable sin, and this is one way of making sure there's no forgiveness. No, something's amiss here.'  
'This is weird,' the Finch said.  
Krondesh said, 'Dex. You said that lieutenant was a uniformed careerist rather than a real warrior?'  
'Not quite those words, but yes,' Dex said. 'His gens were rich and well-connected. And if you want advancement in the Hierarchy, you really need to have been in command of a combat unit at some point. At least if you're aiming for a political office.'  
'An entrenched culture of militarism,' Krondesh noted. 'Also a convenient way of shutting dissenting voices out of the government. But how would a careerist react to an embarrassment?'  
'An embarrassment?' Dex was puzzled.  
'You clearly feel very guilty about all this,' Krondesh said. 'You've not looked for yourself on this site, have you?'  
'No. I mean, why would I? I know I must be listed there.'  
'Without ever having looked? I'm looking at it right now, and I can tell you, you're not here.'  
'But...' Dex trailed off. The krogan was right. He never had looked for himself on the Hierarchy's most wanted lists. He'd always felt a shameful certainty in his culpability.  
Krondesh turned to the Finch. 'Something to realise about army boy here,' he said. 'He's an idealist. He'll deny it, but it's true. He desperately wants to believe in something enough to go out and fight for it. He'd probably be quite happy to throw away his own life if he thought it was important enough. But every time he tries to act on this, life keeps intervening with other ideas. Like a corrupt and useless commanding officer. So that plan hit a brick wall. But there is another option, and that's feel sickeningly, horribly shameful about everything. Whilst hardly a positive thing, it gives him the emotional hit he wants.'  
'Stop,' Dex croaked.  
Unsurprisingly, Krondesh ignored him. 'But shame isn't a rational response. Being ashamed makes no difference to what you've already done. In fact if you really feel bad enough, it can backfire. If it triggers neurotic avoidance behaviours, you can end up flailing your way into worse situations than the one that go you there. Guess what army boy's apparently been doing the last couple of years?'  
The Finch frowned. 'So while he's been off flagellating himself ... he hasn't actually stopped to see if he was on the wanted list?'  
Krondesh shook his head. 'Of course not. If he didn't find his name up there in big letters, it might just interrupt the emotional cycle. Look how much he's squirming right now!'  
'Still,' she said, 'neurotic mess or not, it is strange that he's missing from here.'  
Krondesh nodded, visibly pondering the question.  
The Finch said, 'You said his CO was incompetent?'  
She was actually speaking to Krondesh, but Dex felt he had to answer, if only to try and excuse his own crimes. 'Yes,' he said. 'Quirinius was awful. He would happily have seen the platoon all get killed if it moved his career forward. And then there was the levo food thing.'  
The Finch blinked. 'Levo food?'  
Dex sighed. 'It's a story almost too absurd for words.'  
'This sounds good,' Krondesh said, leaning forwards. He rested his elbows on the table.  
'It was a year or so before the Battle of the Citadel,' Dex said. 'We hadn't been stationed there yet. We were being sent out for a three month tour of the Terminus border. Of course you have to get equipment and materials ordered, and so on. So we set up the order for field rations. Only we didn't get the ration-packs we'd ordered. Turns out Quirinius had found a supplier at ten percent less than Army Standard Costings, and had pocketed the difference. Only he hadn't bothered to check whether the food packs were levo or dextro.'  
'Shit,' the Finch said. 'Couldn't you complain?'  
'The base's Adjudicant Legate - that's they guy who's supposed to investigate allegations - was a personal friend of Quirinius's father. And he owned shares in their business. No chance of him acting against Quirinius. If I'd gone to him, I'd be on a charge for insubordination instead.'  
'Christ,' the Finch said. 'The guy really didn't have a clue, did he?'  
Dex shook his head. 'The men of the platoon were hard-working and loyal. Probably still are, if he hasn't found a way to get them killed. But then there was the CO. He was anything but.'  
'How did he get away with it?' the Finch asked.  
Dex shrugged. 'The spirits only know. Because I certainly don't. It was manageable when we were just patrolling random colonies on Nowhere III or Shithole 6, or whatever. But when we found ourselves in an actual shooting war - on the Citadel of all places! - Quirinius couldn't produce the goods.'  
'It's a funny thing about actual fights,' Krondesh said. 'They have a habit of winnowing out the genuinely incompetent.'  
'Yes,' Dex said, 'but the winnowing would have been the sort that would have seen everyone in my platoon killed. Unnecessarily, as well.' To the Finch, he said, 'I told Krondesh a while back. Quirinius's family were one of the big mercantile houses in the Hierarchy. They owned several chains of civilian stores. And they had a finger in the military procurement pie.'  
'Of course,' the Finch said. 'Money and violence do have a habit of clinging to each other.'  
'We were given orders to secure a section of one of the Wards,' Dex explained. 'Command needed a supply corridor opened to one of the C-Sec outposts. It was under siege by the geth and needed relief. I gather there was a plan to try and push through to the main bearings.'  
The Finch blinked. 'The main bearings - ? Oh, that must have been the period when the Citadel was closed.'  
Dex nodded. 'It was a pretty scary time, that. I was supposed to be coming off of a duty shift at our base, when all the alarms went off. Suddenly everyone was running around like quarians in a hull breach, and THIS IS NOT A DRILL.' He did his best to reproduce the stentorian tones of the alarm sirens. You know, I actually saw that ship of Saren's? You know, the weird geth-built monster dreadnought. It actually went straight over us on the way into the Tower.' Dex shuddered. 'Something about it was just fucking creepy.'  
The Finch nodded. 'I've seen some pictures,' she said. 'There was a big stir of interest on the extranet a while back. There was a rumour going around that it was actually some kind of non-geth AI.'  
'That's possible?' Krondesh asked her.  
'You want my professional opinion?' She shrugged. 'Anything's possible. But with it properly blown up, checking that rumour's going to be a bit difficult.'  
'Along the way to the outpost we were ordered to check out an armaments works,' Dex continued. 'It made various special guns. Command didn't want that in geth hands. But the company was owned by Quirinius's family. And there was a store attached to it.'  
'Oh no,' the Finch said, apparently intuiting where this was going.  
Dex nodded. 'Quirinian insisted on us securing the shop first. And we walked into a geth ambush. He wouldn't let us withdraw.'  
'That's suicidal,' the Finch said. 'Did the man have a death wish?'  
Krondesh twitched, but didn't say anything.  
'No,' Dex said. 'Quirinian was all safe and secure in the command bunker. He'd sent us out without him.'  
The Finch looked appalled. 'I thought turians were supposed to lead from the front?'  
'That's what they tell everyone they do,' Krondesh rumbled. 'It seems the reality and the propaganda don't always overlap.'  
'It wasn't standard operating procedure,' Dex agreed. 'But Quirinian had never needed to worry about SOP. Or much of the rulebook, in fact. I doubt he'd even read it. The Army Staff Handbook, I mean.'  
'Probably not,' Krondesh agreed. 'Sounds like his level might have been more the picture-book end. You know, like Varrick the varren? With his waggly tail?'  
'It seems you know it well,' the Finch observed.  
'Damn right I do!' Krondesh said. 'I loved that book when I was a hatchling. It spawned a lifetime love of reading.'  
The Fich blinked, apparently not having expected an affirmative response. 'Well,' she said, 'I'm glad it was effective, then.'  
Dex said, 'Anyway, to finish off the sad story, I put Quirinian's orders in the bin. The platoon survived its trip to the store and made it to the outpost. The store was completely destroyed, as was the factory. But they stayed out of geth hands. Of course Quirinian found out. We were at the outpost and I remember him raging at me over the comm, about disobedience. And the loss of capital assets to his family. He was about equally upset for both.' Dex sighed. He hadn't told this bit of the story before. 'I remember listening to it for a few minutes. Then I recall I just took my helmet off and dropped it on the floor. It landed with a clank, and it just rolled off to one side. I just stood there, looking at it. Totally gormless, like I couldn’t pull my mandibles in, you know? I could still hear his voice, tinny and quiet from the earphones. I'd had to go into the courtyard behind the building to get a better signal - all the public lines were still down at that point. The last thing I heard was Quirinian raving that when he caught up with me, he'd have me and the other NCOs all prosecuted. I remember feeling sick and angry. Not only had he tried to get us all killed, he was going to use me to get at my troops!'  
The Finch frowned. 'Could he even have done that?'   
'Doubtful,' Krondesh said. 'There's no question Decimus here was culpable under Hierarchy law. But he was the ranking NCO, so the others would be obliged to follow his orders. They'd certainly get a stain on their army records, but I can't see that they'd be formally punished. All they did was follow their orders, after all. And in theory mindless obedience is a virtue for a bird.'  
Dex sighed. 'I wasn't in any kind of rational place right then. We'd started the day with an outbreak of actual fucking war - in the last place in the galaxy you would ever expect it! We'd been in continuous firefights for about the last five hours. Moving a couple of kilometres takes quite a while when you're up against serious armed resistance! All of us had nearly died multiple times. And now this! I just thought, I wasn't willing to be used as a political tool against my own troops. And Quirinius was still ranting.'  
'What happened?' the Finch asked.  
'Someone - I don't know who - had left a set of worker's coveralls lying on a crate in the courtyard,' Dex said. 'Technically I shouldn't have been out there on my own, but I'd planned to stay inside the doorway. And everyone else was manning emplacements overlooking the approaches. But I was still having signal problems even inside the door, so I had to step out. So I was actually on my own, and no-one was looking.' He shrugged, and took a deep draught of the remaining ale. It tasted good. 'Then I had an idea: if Quirinian couldn't find me, he couldn't use me against the others.'  
'Here's something that's interesting about army boy here,' Krondesh said. 'He does try to look after the people he thinks he's in charge of. I think that's why he took me shopping earlier. And how come I have this Phalanx now. It's at least partly why all three of us are still alive.'  
Dex was barely listening. 'It's surprising how quickly you can get out of a combat suit if you need to. I hadn't consciously told myself I was going to desert. But I knew wandering around in an Armiger Legion uniform would attract too much attention. But no-one notices labourers.'  
'The invisibility of the proletariat,' Krondesh noted.  
'It's true,' the Finch said. 'One time in Exeter I forgot the key to unlock my bicycle from the racks in town. But a uni friend worked evenings and weekends for the Council, on their graffiti cleaning team. So I called in a favour and borrowed his fluorescent bib. I went down to South Street with a bolt cutter at rush hour. No-one even looked at me, and certainly no-one stopped me. I mean, it was my bike, but I could've been anyone! I was there, but it was like I wasn’t there. A ghost in this life.’  
Dex said, 'I put the suit in one of the crates.'  
Krondesh asked, 'The gun too?'  
'Carrying a weapon in an active theatre is a good way of getting shot,' Dex said. 'So yes. By then people were hearing that Saren was working with the geth. So turian collaborators were possible. Nervous and paranoid troops and a heavily-armed stranger are a volatile mix. I had to lose the rifle, so I did.'  
'Obviously you got out,' the Finch said.  
Dex nodded. 'Some of the bigger towers in the Wards actually have lifeboats, in case of fire or whatever on the lower levels. With all the shooting lots of people were worried about the integrity of the station. I found my way to a building with boats. People were piling onto them. I piled in with them. The plan was just to hide for a while, but then the station started opening again. Someone panicked and hit the eject button. I think they thought the ward was breaking off or something.'  
'The station spins,' the Finch said.  
Dex nodded. 'It does indeed. Centripetal acceleration and an unmoored lifeboat. We got spat clean out, like pip from a squished fruit. The boat went straight into the debris from the space battle. We got picked up by an asari frigate with orders to withdraw. They thought we were a military lifepod. By the time they realised their mistake we were all on the wrong side of the mass relay. Needless to say, no-one had proper travel documents, so there was epic bureaucratic confusion at the other end of the journey.'  
'And doubtless no-one on the Citadel was answering their calls yet,' Krondesh noted. 'So none of your legal statuses could be checked properly.'  
Dex nodded. 'By then I'd realised I was a deserter, whatever my motives. I figured my backside was toast. I could go back and face the music ... or I could just slip away. So I did that. Figured I was a dead man walking anyway, so why not? One thing led to another and I wound up here, working odd jobs for odd people.'  
'What a mess,' the Finch said.  
Krondesh looked thoughtful. 'I have an idea,' he said. 'I'm sure the Hierarchy must have some sort of extranet memorial site for everyone who gets shot, given what it's like.'  
'It does,' Dex said. 'Search under the Hall of Honour for the Noble Dead.'  
Krondesh boggled. 'Who the fuck writes the copy for this crap?' he said. 'Good grief.' Nonetheless, his fingers moved over the keypad. 'Oh, here we are.'  
To the Finch, Dex said, 'The memorial site is a place where the Hierarchy honours its fallen.'  
He wondered why they were looking at it. They wouldn't find any record of him there. After all, he was sat in front of them, entirely alive!  
To no-one in particular, Krondesh said, 'Or from another point of view, it's where they gloatingly list the names of all the terrified conscripts who were butchered in pointless fights a long way from home. For no other reason than to preserve the supposed raison d'etre of the ruling military-industrial elite. After all, who would need a giant army if they didn't keep finding lots of little wars?'  
'The krogan is a cynic,' the Finch observed.  
'The mammal states the obvious,' Krondesh returned. 'And I note you didn't tell me I was wrong.'  
'You could almost be describing life as a krogan,' Dex said to Krondesh.  
'Aside from the conscripts bit.'  
'And how many of your self-styled clan warriors are actually conscious, deliberate volunteers?'  
Krondesh scowled but he didn't answer that.  
The Finch was peering over the display. 'I'm glad the omnitool's translating,' she said. 'I don’t read turian. Good God, there are so many names. This is awful!'  
'This is just the last year's casualties,' Krondesh said. 'A below average year, according to the stats in this box. I see there are archival tabs on the page as well.'  
'How do we search it?' the Finch asked.  
'Funny, there's no slot for a name,' Krondesh said. 'Service number, unit designation, region of operations, ship, commanding officer ... let's put in that Quirinian guy, and see what that turns up.'  
'I'm a criminal,' Dex said. 'Not dead.'  
The krogan tapped some keys.  
'Well,' the Finch said, 'look at this. Isn't that interesting?'  
Krondesh looked up at Dex. 'Didn't know you were a Palavenian, army boy,' he said.  
Dex felt confused. 'What? How -?'  
In answer, Krondesh turned his arm. Dex stared at the holographic display. His own face stared back at him, complete with blue paint on the cheek-plates. The face was two years younger, and the neck it was mounted on emerged from the collar of his old dress uniform.  
'Shit,' Dex croaked.  
There was his rank, name, number and unit. Under it was his former unit designation. And beneath it, it said, 'Deceased - Battle of the Citadel, 2183. Killed in action. Identified from remains of uniform.'  
'Isn't that interesting?' the Finch repeated herself.  
'What the fuck?' Dex asked. 'How?'  
'I can take a guess,' Krondesh said. 'After you vanished, your former CO realised he'd lost his scapegoat. He could've filed a charge against you. But he'd have had to explain what had happened. And that might draw attention to him. Sure you didn't defend his much-vaunted store, but why were you there in the first place? Was that in your orders? Army boy, you were being led by a dumb careerist varren. You were gone and you failed to reappear. From what it says here, looks like they found your gear after you dumped it. So he took that as evidence you were dead. Clearly the geth had killed you and taken the body!'  
'Why would they do that?' Dex croaked.  
Krondesh spread his arms. 'They're geth. Who knows why they do anything? Maybe they wanted to taxidermy your corpse and put you on their mantlepiece? Don't ask me what he said. The point is, he told your army you were dead. That got the heat off of his arse. That's why there's no reward out for you. That's why no-one's looking for you.'  
'You're in the clear,' the Finch told him.  
'But ... but ... the Hierarchy never lets a deserter go!'  
'Ancestors give me strength,' Krondesh said. He thumped a fist against his headplates. 'Army boy, I think there's a basic cognitive error going on here. You still desperately want to see the turian army how the propaganda people paint it. Utterly selfless, utterly disciplined, utterly competent, never ever ever makes even the single smallest mistake. You of all people should know it's not always like that. The army in your head would never let you escape, yes, true. The army in the galaxy we live in already has!'  
'So ... all this time ... I've been painting these pointless colours on my head...'  
'Yes,' Krondesh said. 'You can stop doing that any time you like. No-one's looking, no-one cares! You're free. Your past is that - your past. It doesn't have to rule your future anymore.'  
Dex found his eyes drawn to Krondesh's purple plates. 'And you?' he asked, voice shaky. 'Is anyone looking for you? Even now?'  
The krogan stared. It seemed he had no answer for that. His mouth opened, then closed.  
Before he could say anything, a shadow fell over the table. Dex looked up. One Aria's batarian staff had appeared at the table. It wasn't Bray - this was someone else.  
'You lot,' he said. 'The Boss wants you. Upstairs.'  
He jerked a finger in the direction of Aria's office.


	17. Discussions With The Boss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A krogan, turian and human meet with Aria. Kat’s absence is noted; Karrean is noted to be a finished problem.
> 
> The practicalities of station life are discussed.
> 
> Dex has another moral quandary to dither over; Krondesh is unsympathetic. The Finch suggests a compromise.
> 
> A monetary decision is made…

The music could still be heard, but it was remote. The thick walls and armour-glass windows dulled the bass into a vague rumble. A few favoured guests sat at special VIP tables a level or so below where Dex was stood. Those lucky few added a gentle susurration of eating and conversation to the inner sanctum.  
Dex, Krondesh and the Finch were stood at the focal point of a half-rectangle of couches. Armed guards stood on either side, neither quite reassuring nor quite actively threatening. Dex's hands were empty. He'd been required to hand his Phaeston in at the door. Krondesh had protested handing over his guns, but the compulsory nature of the requirement was not in doubt. It was no wonder that security was tight in here.  
In front of them was Aria T'Loak herself.  
'Well,' she said, 'look what we have here.'  
Dex had never met the Pirate Queen of Omega before. He'd seen her once or twice, in the distance, and of course there had been that memorable day when Kat's assassination attempt had occurred. This, however, was new. Dex was surprised to discover that he was actually a couple of centimetres taller than she was.  
'I find myself in an awkward situation,' T'Loak said. She looked over the three of them in turn. Dex had a weird sensation of being evaluated and somehow being found wanting.  
'What would that be?' Dex asked, careful to keep his tone neutral.  
T'Loak took a breath. 'Frankly, the three of you look like you could be trouble. A dead turian spec ops type - I seem to be meeting a lot of dead aliens at the moment!'  
Dex blinked. 'You ... know about that?'  
T'Loak looked annoyed. 'Of course I know about that, bird-brain! While you were sat out there in the bar my people ran a thorough background check on you. Apparently you're supposed to be dead.'  
'To be fair,' Dex said, 'I didn't actually know that the Hierarchy thought I was dead before today. Honestly I thought they had me pegged as a deserter.'  
'A turian deserter,' T'Loak said. She waved a hand dismissively. 'Well, no matter. Whatever the truth is, I'm sure it will come out in the wash.' She turned to Krondesh. 'And then there's you. A krogan who vanished off of Tuchanka under a cloud - no, don't look so surprised. I have contacts in the Blood Pack, you know. Getting the lowdown on Tuchanka isn't difficult if you know the right people to ask. Drau Krondesh - here.'  
'I'm not a Drau,' Krondesh said. He reached up and rubbed his plates with one hand. 'Believe me, they were quite emphatic about that.'  
T'Loak shook her head, looking momentarily irritated. 'Whatever. And then we have you - possibly the worst of the lot.' She shot the Finch a glare.  
The Finch blinked. 'Me?'  
'Yes,' T'Loak agreed. 'A scientist specialising in dubiously-legal AI research, who drops off the scene a few years ago. Rumours of employment with questionable Noverian businesses. And then a complete disappearance just prior to a particularly-notable corporate bankruptcy. And then you reappear here, of all places. Working as a shady recruitment agent. It does look strange.'  
'They went bankrupt?' the Finch looked surprised. 'I hadn't heard.'  
T'Loak waved a hand airily. 'I gather if your employees keep turning up dead under weird circumstances, eventually that isn't healthy for the bottom line. And it's certainly not healthy for staff retention.'  
The Finch's complexion became unusually-pale. 'No,' she said. 'I suppose it wouldn't be.'  
'Normally,' T'Loak said, 'if I ran into a trio like you three, I'd assume you were bad news. And I'd want you off my station.'  
Dex felt his stomach clench. Had they guessed wrong? Was this about to be bad? From the corner of his eye, he noted that Krondesh had tensed up too.  
'However,' T'Loak said, her tone softening, 'the fact is, you've brought me information that's proved ... useful.'  
'You didn't ... know about Kat?' Dex heard himself ask.  
T'Loak looked annoyed. 'I knew of her,' she said. 'I knew she was an ambitious, power-hungry bitch. But that I'm fine with. I know how to deal with ambitious and power-hungry. What I'm not okay with is people damaging the station and plotting against me.' She smiled. It wasn't a pleasant expression. 'I am very definitely not okay with that.'  
'So what happens now?' the Finch asked.  
T'Loak nodded. 'Your good friend Karrean tried denying everything, of course. That lasted nearly ten entire minutes. Your extra files - the "sensational" ones - gave me some interesting reading. The truth was extracted soon enough.'  
'Extracted?' Dex asked.  
'I can tell you what we did, if you'd like.' T'Loak smiled again. Dex managed not to shudder. He did feel a twitch of the mandibles, though. T'Loak continued, 'Alternatively, I could also not tell you.'  
The Finch wiped her forehead with the back of a hand. 'That - perhaps we don't want to know.'  
'It's probably wise,' T'Loak agreed. 'Karrean isn't someone you need worry about now. He won't be causing any more trouble.'  
Dex wondered how long the man's death had took. He and the other two had only been sat in the booth for about ninety minutes.  
'The fact is,' T'Loak said, 'I didn't know that Kat was behind that nonsense a few months ago. I knew the Collectors were getting onto the station, somehow, and I knew deals were being done. But I didn't know she was the ringleader. I'm fine with ambitious and greedy, but I'm not fine with stupid. I'm pretty clear about where the red lines are, and she's crossed all of them. I'd say that's pretty stupid, wouldn't you agree?'  
Dex resisted the urge to nod his head convulsively. Instead he just said, 'Kat's never dealt too well with not getting her way. On anything.'  
T'Loak turned and walked over to the big window. It overlooked the main area of Upper Afterlife. She appeared to be thinking about something.  
'People don't realise,' she said finally.  
There was a pause, and nothing more was forthcoming. Krondesh asked, 'They don't realise what?'  
'They don't realise just what I have to do to keep this station alive,' T'Loak said. 'There aren't many other structures like it in the galaxy. The only real comparison is the Citadel, and that's something of a special case. That one appears to run itself, without much work from the likes of us. This one is different. We didn't inherit it from anyone. None of the tech is sufficiently-advanced magic. Keeping it alive, from one day to the next, takes work. A lot of it. And money. Just heating the station alone runs through dozens of billions of credits' worth of electricity every month. Then there's air, gravity and the water supply. And keeping the lower levels from flooding. I believe you've seen the pumping station?'  
Dex frowned, wondering where this was going.  
T'Loak didn't appear to be paying them any attention. She continued, 'If I was a government, the taxes you'd all have to pay would be ruinous. On planets, all these services are provided for free by nature. Not here.'  
'Food isn't cheap,' Krondesh noted.  
'There are no garden worlds in this solar system,' T'Loak said. 'If you want something nicer than protein vat glop, it either comes from someone's pod-allotment, or it comes in through the mass relays. There aren't many allotments. And interstellar haulage doesn't come cheap. So yes, prices will be on the high side.  
'None of you see the heating bill, or the electric bill, or the water costs. I pay for all of that. Out of the profits of the eezo mines. People ask where the money goes, why we don't share more with the people of the station. I say, I already do. The fact this place is still inhabitable is basically in my gift. There are good reasons why Omega was abandoned so many times in the past, before I took over here. Self-sustaining space colonies don't come cheap. In many respects, you're lucky to have me. I let the people of the station live their lives. I don't interfere. But I control the air, the water and the electricity. In a system with no inhabitable planets. If anyone else was in charge here...' She shrugged. 'I can't imagine that it would be good. How do you deal with a police state that even controls the air you breathe?'  
Dex wasn't sure if the question needed an answer. He felt the need to say something, though. 'I don't know,' he said.  
'No,' she agreed. 'You don't. Really, I'm almost absurdly generous. People say things are bad here, but they could be so much worse. Is it a wonder that I like to protect my investment? People like Kat, Karrean, things like the Collectors ... they all threaten that investment. I won't tolerate it. I can't tolerate it.' With sudden, mercurial rage, she pounded a fist into her hand, snarling.  
Dex managed, just barely, not to jump.  
T'Loak took a deep breath, then shook her head. 'No matter. I try to be proactive, deal with threats before they escalate. If possible I try to get people to sort things out for me, rather than having to get involved myself. The more I get involved, the closer I am to becoming the monster everyone thinks I am.'  
'Given the rumours we've been hearing about a plague outbreak,' Krondesh said, 'one wonders about the efficacy of that approach.'  
For a moment, Dex genuinely thought the krogan's big mouth had doomed them all. T'Loak froze. It was only for a moment, though. She fixed the krogan with a glare, then smiled again. 'Actually,' she said, 'I've already set some chess pieces into motion on that. Even if some of them don't realise that they are chess pieces. We should see some results soon. But I don't think we're here to talk about coughing aliens, are we?'  
'No, I suppose not,' Dex said.  
'Okay,' T'Loak said, apparently coming to some sort of decision. 'Here's the situation as I see it. You three are on my radar now. However, you've been sensible and you've worked to uphold the station's order. You haven't kicked anyone's apple carts over - or at least, you haven't kicked mine, and that's the one that matters. So you'll get what you wanted. Kat's offices are being cleaned out right now. I expect news on the liquidation in a couple of hours or so. When that's dealt with, you three can go down to her armoury and take whatever you want.'  
Dex's imagination suddenly filled with visions of the Black Widow. He felt his mandibles twitch.  
'I'm sure,' T'Loak continued, 'you can all find some toys you'd like. Or at least something you can sell for money. Furthermore, my organisation is putting out a statement, across all media. We're making it clear we know who was actually behind the transit tube bombing, and who they are. You needn't worry too much about anyone being after your heads now.'  
'This is wonderful news,' Dex said. He felt a growing sensation of relief, even happiness. They'd done it! They were in the clear!  
T'Loak nodded, looking thoughtful. 'Doubtless. But there is one wrinkle.'  
Krondesh was frowning. 'You haven't mentioned Kat,' he said.  
She nodded. 'Astute. A krogan with a sharp mind, I see. Yes, Kataza T'raik has done a runner. You didn't encounter her when you mounted your little raid on her business, did you?'  
The question was rhetorical, but Dex answered it anyway. 'No,' he said. 'We didn't see her.'  
T'Loak nodded. 'No, you didn't. While Karrean was spilling his beans - and his stomach! - I had my data people do a bit of digging. It turns out that about the time you were shooting your way into Kat's offices, her private yacht was undocking from the station.'  
'Oh fuck,' Dex said.  
'Quite,' she agreed.  
'So she's buggered off through the relay?' the Finch asked.  
T'Loak frowned. 'This is where it gets odd,' she said. 'Because Kat didn't go to the relay. We went over the traffic logs carefully. And double-checked them against the station's vehicle-monitoring sensors. Her ship headed sunwards, in-system.'  
'What?' Dex stared. 'But there's nothing there!'  
'Not entirely true,' T'Loak said. 'There are some old industrial facilities. On some of the moons of Urdak.'  
'I've never heard of them,' Dex said.  
'You wouldn't have. They've been abandoned for centuries. In fact the last time any of them were used was back in Patriarch's days.' She snorted. 'And even then their operations were winding down. I never saw any point in trying to revive them.'  
The Finch was frowning. 'But if these industrial places have been empty for centuries, they should be complete ruins now.'  
'Would they decay if they were in vacuum?' Krondesh asked.  
The Finch sighed. 'They wouldn't rot. But they would undergo thermal stress, as they pass in and out of sunlight and shadow. When things keep expanding and contracting, that will eventually weaken them. Stuff snaps and falls off. And there will be meteor impacts. Little bits of cosmic rock, punching little holes. Or every now and then, not-so-little holes. Probably radiation damage as well, if these moons are inside Urdak's ion belts. It will be slow, but it will build up over the centuries. Plus brown dwarfs can sometimes flare. I don't know if Urdak's prone to them, but if it does throw a wobbly every now and then, that won't help.'  
'So what could be there for her?' Dex asked.  
'I don't know,' T'Loak said. 'And believe me, that nags at me. But I can make one guess. Kat wouldn't be going there if she didn't think there was some use in it for her.'  
'Kat bugged out,' Dex said. 'Thinking about it, it is odd that we didn't run into her earlier.'  
'At a guess,' T'Loak said, 'she got word that someone was attacking her offices. She knew you were still alive by then. She must have assumed I knew what she'd been doing, and wanted her head. Or if I didn't, I would soon. So she decided to cut her losses and bug out. She left Karrean behind as a batarian sacrifice.'  
'Crap,' Krondesh said.  
'Here's what I'm proposing,' T'Loak said. 'You three know Kat far better than I do. You have a better idea of what she's capable of. I'd like you to go after her and take her down.'  
Dex blinked. 'How would we do that? She's not on the station anymore.'  
T'Loak looked exasperated. 'Oh for - an overly-literal turian! Dumbass, I have ships. I could lend you one for a trip to Urdak and back. That's not the difficult part.'  
'What,' the Finch asked, 'would be in it for us?'  
T'Loak nodded. 'Kat's organisation has money. Lots of it. There's a full forensic audit on their assets, going on right now.' She pointed to a data pad sat on the sofa. 'I don't expect full results for a few more days. The accountants need to be thorough, and Kat's obfuscated a lot of her cash. But we know she has at least forty million credits in liquid funds.'  
Dex's mandibles fell open.  
T'Loak continued, 'I need at least ten million to fix the damage to the transit tube. Infrastructure isn't cheap! A few million more for my own organisation, and some for the investment fund.'  
Dex wondered what the investment fund was, then he supposed it was probably none of his business.  
'However,' T'Loak said, 'do this for me and I reckon I could spare a bit for each of you. Say a million each?'  
Dex's mandibles fell open again. This time he couldn't quite seem to persuade them to close. A million credits? A million? A one followed by six zeroes? He couldn't imagine that much money.  
The Finch's eyes narrowed. 'Only a million?' she said, sounding scornful. 'Only that much, for a job that risks our lives? No thanks. On that basis, I'm not getting out of bed for less than five million. Each.'  
T'Loak snorted. 'Five? Not a chance. One point five, maybe.'  
'You want me to cut my own throat? Fine, four point five.'  
T'Loak snorted. 'All right, you're not going to be rolled. Fine, I get the message. Let's cut through the nonsense. My final offer is three million each, plus definite proof of Kat's death.'  
'What counts as definite?'  
'A head would be good,' T'Loak said.  
Krondesh was looking closely at Dex. 'How are your principles today, army boy?' he asked. 'Kat's a complete bitch, and three million is a lot of money. Any chance of a one-time exception?'  
T'Loak looked puzzled. 'Am I missing something?'  
'If he won't go, then I'm not in either,' Krondesh said.  
'Oh crap,' the Finch groaned.  
'What is this?' T'Loak asked, sounding annoyed.  
Krondesh said, 'Army boy here has a thing about not being a merc. This deal is pretty much merc territory. I've been trying to talk sense to him, but he's good at ignoring the voice of reason. He's had a lifetime's practise, and you don't get over that in one go.'  
Three million and Kat's head. Or his principles. Dex felt sick. This problem, again! Why did it never just go away? Why couldn't any of this just be simple?  
'You could go without him,' T'Loak said.  
Krondesh shook his head. 'Not going to work,' he said. 'Put together, we have a good skillset. The three of us cover each other’s weaknesses. Apart? Nope, we'll just end up dead. And that would be pointless. As far as I'm concerned, this deal can only work if we're all together.'  
Dex realised the Pirate Queen of Omega was eyeing him with a jaundiced expression. 'Are you seriously telling me you're the one person on this station who has motivations other than money? Really?'  
Dex felt awful. Were his principles about to ruin the others too? Was there any way this could be avoided? He had no idea what to do.  
Unbelievably, the Finch came to the rescue.  
She asked one simple question. 'Does Kat actually need to be dead?'  
T'Loak paused, considering. 'You think you can bring her in alive?'  
'We can try,' the Finch said. 'It worked with Karrean, didn't it?' To Dex, she said, 'Basically, mercs kill people for money. The objective here wouldn't be killing. In a sense, we'd be bringing Kat in for justice. Granted it's not the sort that's backed by a diplomatically-recognised bureaucratic state, but it's still justice of a sort. And perhaps it would be better for Omega's stability if the punishment was open and public?'  
T'Loak considered that. She nodded, eyes narrow. 'There is some merit in that view,' she conceded. 'All right, I'll amend my offer. If you can bring Kat in alive, you're free to do so. If she gets shot resisting justice, I can live with that too, but I want proof of death in that case. Is this enough to keep your precious principles, turian?'  
Dex took a deep breath. This was still more merc-like than he'd prefer, but he couldn't see any better options. He took a deep breath. 'All right,' he said. 'If everyone else agrees, I'm in.'  
The deal was done.


	18. Re-arming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A happy turian is one with a new gun.
> 
> A happy krogan is also one with a new gun.
> 
> In the Finch’s case, a happy human is one with a bag full of various electronic components that she knows she can peddle for a decent amount of money. And there are new guns too, although she’s not as bothered about them as the other two are.
> 
> Afterwards, Dex receives some intelligence on Kat’s suspected whereabouts…

Kat's dealership was in ruins.  
The glass frontage had been shattered. All that remained was a carpet of crystal fragments, spilled out across the floor. Within the front reception, the furniture had been broken, burned and turned over. Pot plants lay on their sides, soil spilled out around them in sad little fans. Here and there were the burned and twisted corpses of Kat's guards. There was an unpleasant smell of ozone, excrement and burnt meat hanging over the place. To Dex's nostrils, it was the familiar after-scent of battle. As he and the other two progressed inward, they saw plenty of T'Loak's troops walking around, but no survivors from Kat's forces. Apparently T'Loak's organisation felt no need for prisoners.  
This time, access to the interior of the dealership was easy. All the doors had been blown, torn or burnt away from their hinges. The corridors beyond were scarred with carbonisation from many little fires, and part-flooded by cascades of water from the fire extinguishers. Little curls of steam and smoke moved lazily through the air here and there, creating twists of fog in front of the remaining lights.  
'Wow,' Krondesh said, looking impressed. 'You know when Aria's been through a place.'  
'Christ,' the Finch said, shaking her head. 'This is insane.'  
No-one paid the three of them any mind. T'Loak's forces had clearly been briefed to expect them. They picked their way through the destruction   
and the rubble until they reached the armoury. Guards had been posted outside to stop looting, but they just opened the door and waved the three through.  
Moments later, they were stood inside the armoury. This room at least was still intact. The armoury was just as it had been before, a quiet, cool space lit by white overhead lights. They were surrounded by stacked crates of gear and racks of weapons. Air rustled through the overhead vents and occasionally, a pipe would groan somewhere in the wall. 'Well,' Krondesh said, 'we're in. That was refreshingly easy.'  
Dex realised he was breathing a little fast and he could feel his heartbeat. He was excited. Trying not to sound too enthusiastic, he said, 'Let's see what we can find, then.'  
The Finch was carrying a folded-up bag under one arm. 'I'll start over there,' she said, pointing to a rack filled wit boxes of components.  
'Components?' Krondesh asked. 'Not guns?'  
The Finch nodded. 'Second-hand guns are ten a penny on this station. Electronics mods? Rather less so. Doubtless I'll bag some guns as well. But in the meantime?' She shrugged, then strode off toward the rack.  
Dex was looking ahead, through the shelves and stacked boxes, towards where he remembered seeing the Black Widow. He tried to damp his excitement. Doubtless some sort of disappointment was on its way. Perhaps the gun was just a fake - a vid-prop, maybe. A cunningly-painted piece of cardboard. Or maybe Kat had taken it with her when she did her bolt. Or maybe it was a dud. Perhaps that was why it had been left lying around for Kat's contacts to find.  
His feet were moving. He could hear them, ticking on the tiled floor. Step after step, he moved forward.  
Then they brought him past a rack of cheap rifles, and there it was.  
The Black Widow was still there. It was held in its display frame, as he'd seen it before. Dex reached out. He realised his hand was shaking. Carefully he opened the frame on the case. He took the gun in both hands and lifted it.  
His first impression was that it was heavy. He'd expected that, but he still grunted as picked it up.  
'Definitely not made of cardboard,' he said under his breath.  
He turned it over in his hands. It was a long, tubular, black shape. As deadly as it was heavy. He peered into the sights. They seemed in order. He checked to see if it had a live clip. No it didn't - good. That allowed him to safely inspect the barrel. Everything seemed in order there. A fact slowly dawned on Dex. It was his. He actually had a sniper rifle again. And it was a good one.  
The turian felt a moment of complete jubilation.  
'Now I need to get this thing modded,' he muttered. Normally that would be expensive and awkward. Not in this room, however.  
A few minutes later and Dex was happily busy at one of the room's weapons benches. Poking around through the nearby shelves and boxes, he found himself an additional thermal clip set that was compatible with the Widow. Having more shots would be good. In addition, he also found a rather-nice barrel extension. It would add both extra damage and a nice bit of armour penetration. The barrel extension was quite a chunky thing, so it added to the weapon's existing weight, but Dex felt that was an acceptable price to pay.  
He was stood there for some time, humming quietly to himself whilst he fiddled with various components. For the first time in ages, he felt quite happy. He was still poking at the various items when Krondesh reappeared.  
The krogan's arrival was presaged by a slight shaking in the floor, and the thump-thump of his massive feet. A shadow spilled across the tiles beside Dex's boots.  
Dex looked up.  
Krondesh's head protuded from the hump-cowl of a Berserker suit. The krogan was mostly garbed in black plate, except for the glowing green lights that were part of the suit.  
'Well?' Krondesh asked, spreading his arms. 'What do you think?'  
There was an unfamiliar expression on the alien reptile's face. For a moment it confused Dex. Then he realised it was a grin.  
'You look happy,' Dex said. 'I take it you've got everything you want?'  
'Even this.' Krondesh had the helmet clutched in one hand. 'Also, look what else I found.' He waved his other hand.  
Krondesh had a new shotgun. It was a brutal, greyish shape with a fat vent running down one side. Everything about it radiated a sense of violent menace. It took the turian a moment to recognise the design.  
Dex stared. 'An M-300 Claymore?' he asked.  
'Oh yes!' The krogan beamed. 'And some mods too. Seriously, one of those fancy armour-busting barrel things and look at this! An omniblade!'  
A glowing orange shape blinked into life. It made a hissing, popping noise as the fields stabilised.  
Dex stared. The omniblade cast a flickering, ruddy light on the floor and the blocky body of the gun itself. 'Dare I ask?' he said.  
'Well,' Krondesh said, 'obviously this gun's a proper beast. But the reloading time isn't great. So that's what the blade is for. If someone tries to close on me while I'm busy, I can cut them with this!' The krogan mimed slashing someone with the blade.  
'Oh spirits,' Dex said, feeling his mandibles waver.  
'Plus also,' Krondesh said, 'this is a gun that's named for a sword. So it wouldn't really be appropriate if it had no melee capacity.'  
Apparently Krondesh was very particular about these things.  
Dex sighed. 'Well, I have my sniping tube, so I suppose I can't complain.'  
'Well come on then,' Krondesh said. 'Let's see it. Let's see what all the fuss is about.'  
In answer, Dex picked up the Black Widow and held it out for Krondesh to see. The alien reptile gave it a careful examination. After a moment, he nodded, seeming satisfied.  
'That's a nice piece of kit,' he said. 'Not really my sort of thing. But I reckon you can make plenty of idiots miserable with that.'  
'Briefly miserable, yes,' Dex agreed. 'I'm not a sadist. No need to prolong their discomfiture.'  
'Fair point,' Krondesh agreed.  
'How is your new suit?' Dex asked him. 'Is it what you wanted?'  
Krondesh nodded. 'Yes, it's good. Fits well, padded in all the right places. The plating's all good quality, and it appears to be undamaged. Makes me wonder what happened to whoever had it first.'  
'Presumably they didn't get shot, then,' Dex said.  
'I'm guessing they were wandering around with the helmet off,' Krondesh said. 'I didn't find any mess inside the hump but a headshot could be what happened.'  
'That's how I got my Predator suit,' Dex said. 'Though for me there was a lot of cleaning up afterwards.'  
'Really?'  
'Yeah. The merc in question was a pain in the backside while he was alive, too. So I guess it's appropriate that he glooped everywhere.'  
The krogan thought that was hilarious. When he was done laughing he shook his head. 'Actually,' he said, 'the other possibility is blunt trauma.'  
'Yeah,' Dex said. 'I suppose getting hit over the head can kill, can't it? And if you go thumped on the plates, it might not necessarily make a lot of mess.'  
Krondesh nodded. 'Seems plausible. Anyway, I guess the takeaway point is, the suit is real. No idea how Kat got it, but it's not any kind of fake. It's not a cheap one with a paint job. It's not any sort of vid prop or anything like that. And it wasn't half-full with its previous owner when I got it.'  
Dex felt his mandibles wobbling with mirth. A moment later, he started laughing. The krogan stared at him. When Dex managed to control the outburst, he said, 'You know, I had exactly the same thoughts about the Black Widow! I was convinced I was going to discover it was made of toilet roll tubes or something!'  
'Well,' Krondesh said, 'I suppose we both have good reason to distrust Kat.'  
Dex keyed the gun to fold up. Feeling pleased, he passed it over his shoulder to the magnetic clasp on his backplate. It clicked snugly home, like it belonged there. 'Shall we go and see how the human is doing?' he asked.  
'Yeah,' Krondesh said. 'I thought the mammal had been a bit quiet for some time.'  
They went to see how the Finch was doing.  
She had ensconced herself on the opposite side of the armoury, in front of a weapons bench. She was busy fiddling with various electrics and implements. Beside her were several neat rows of components. All of them had been sorted by type and function. She was inspecting a rifle scope with her omnitool when Dex and Krondesh came over.  
'Found anything useful?' Dex asked her.  
The Finch nodded. 'Oh yes. There's at least four thousand credits of electronics over there already.' She gestured at her collected parts.  
'Should you be quoting that number so loudly?' Krondesh sounded concerned.  
The Finch snorted. 'If you were going to mug me, there wouldn't be much I could do to stop you, would there? So why worry?'  
The krogan considered that point. 'True,' he conceded.  
'You know,' Dex said, 'in hindsight it's obvious that Kat had big plans. This armoury is far too large just to be the usual security operation.'  
Krondesh nodded. 'Obvious in hindsight,' he said. 'But why would you guess beforehand?'  
'Have a look at this,' the Finch said. She reached under the weapon bench and lifted out an assault rifle.  
For a moment Dex didn't recognise it. Then he blinked. 'An M7 Lancer?' he said. 'Reall? Where did Kat get that?'  
Krondesh frowned. 'I don't know that one,' he said.  
'I was in one of the bins,' the Finch said. 'Technically it's a museum piece. But it's one of the good museum pieces.'  
'The M7 line,' Dex told the krogan, 'use the old-style thermal technology. No swapping thermal clips in and out. You just stick the one heatsink in there. And it stays there till it breaks. Sadly no-one makes these guns anymore, so they're getting hard to find.'  
The Finch said, 'It has both the old sink and a barrel extension. I've checked them over and they're both in working order. Well-maintained. I've decided to keep it.'  
Dex nodded. 'Good choice. With no clip-swapping, it's a relatively easy gun to use. And it packs a pretty decent punch, with a good rate of fire.'  
'Sounds like it beats your average shitty M8,' Krondesh said.  
Dex nodded. 'Spirits, yes! Frankly the whole thermal clip thing was really a bit of a step backward, technologically. They were just bringing it in at the time I ... left ... the Army. I remember there was a huge push to update training and doctrines to account for it. And no-one was happy. Our platoon had been scheduled to be re-equipped the week after the geth attack.'  
'The week after,' Krondesh said. 'Nice timing there.'  
Dex shrugged. 'No idea if the switchover ever went ahead. I was gone by then.'  
'One advantage of being legally dead,' Krondesh said. 'You don't have to accept a crappy new M8.'  
'It would have been a Phaeston,' Dex corrected.  
'They didn't give you a sniper rifle?' the Finch asked.  
'Once I made Platoon Sergeant I didn't personally get to do much sniping anymore,' Dex said. 'Frankly, most of what I did was paperwork, actually. Cleaning up the lieutenant's many messes. Preferably before they had any real-world consequences. The man never saw a procurement form he couldn't fuck up.'  
'Wow,' Krondesh said.  
'Talking of things to procure,' the Finch said, 'Dex, you might want to have a look on the turian armour rack over there.' She pointed toward one of the racks of gear, across the room. She was pointing toward an area Dex hadn't been in yet.  
Dex looked over. He wondered what it was he was supposed to see. Nothing looked that obviously worth investigating from here. Should he go over? He considered it. He supposed there was no reason why not. They had enough time.  
'All right,' he said.  
The Finch made that weird human smile. ‘Trust me,’ she said. ‘I think you’ll like it.’  
By now Dex was sufficiently used to the alien that he understood that she was trying to be reassuring. But he did wish to the spirits that she could find some way to make that gesture without giving him a view of those awful slab-like teeth.  
He managed not to shudder, instead just nodding graciously.  
He walked over to have a look at the rack. He was still cradling his new sniper rifle. He felt quite reluctant to put it down.  
There was some truth, he acknowledged, in the old saying that a happy turian was one with a new gun.  
There were various suits on the rack. Most of them were cheap, basic, badly-fitted rubbish. But at the end...  
Dex stared. He glanced down at the damaged section of his Predator suit. 'Well,' he said to himself, 'that problem just went away.'  
The Finch had come through.  
Sat amidst all the dross there was one gem. Either Kat just hadn’t known what she’d got, or she’d been saving this item up as a present for some particularly-favoured employee. Where she’d got hold of this, Dex had no idea.  
At the end of the rack was a turian heavy-armour Armax Arsenal Predator suit.  
One of the best that money usually couldn't buy, and here it was just for him to take. Not being an idiot, Dex resolved to do exactly that. It had the usual camouflage-painted plates, with the typical dark grey undersuit. It was complete, undamaged, and had all the parts that it should do.  
‘Okay,’ Dex said. ‘Decision made.’  
With a beep, he keyed his new rifle to fold up. He propped it up against a nearby crate. He lifted the suit off the rack, grunting at the sudden weight. He then took it behind the rack, where he could get changed without being in Krondesh or the Finch’s line of sight.  
Getting changed took him a short while, but he figured it was worth the time.  
Several straps had to be adjusted; a couple of the plates weren't quite sitting where they should when Dex first put the suit on. Luckily the boots turned out to be the right size. When in basic training in the Army, Dex had made the awkward discovery that his feet weren't quite the right shape for the Army's standard sizes. On the face of it you wouldn't think that a couple of millimetres would make such a huge difference. The blisters on his soles and the scuffing on his talons had disagreed.  
Fortunately, all of the sizing difficulties with the new suit proved manageable. A few minutes' adjustment and Dex had everything sorted out. As he settled the Black Widow onto place on his back, he realised he actually felt quite happy.  
A few moments later, he found himself holding his Phaeston. He turned it over in his hands, looking at the angular shape of the gun. The overhead lights gleamed on the barrel. It was a weapon he was fond of, and it had been through a lot with him. But, the awkward truth was, it wasn't particularly powerful.  
Dex found himself looking at the nearest rack of assault rifles. While part of him didn't want to replace the Phaeston...  
His eyes settled on a Mattock rifle.  
Another few moments were sufficient to find him stood at the nearest weapons bench, soldering iron in one hand, omnitool in the other, working to transfer some mods. The iron hissed and the air smelt of hot solder.  
'Thermal clip,' Dex muttered to himself as he settled one mod into place, 'and a barrel extension. More heat capacity and more damage. Now, what about ammunition?'  
He set about adjusting the gun's ammunition. Kat's former armoury had the tools and the templates for making armour-piercing rounds. Dex could see that as being quite useful. He'd not had this option before now. The problem had been the cost of the software templates his omnitool needed for the fabrication. They'd always been too much. Dex was also too cautious to try downloading a cracked version of the templates off of the extranet. Armaments companies were known to 'poison' download sites with deliberately-broken fake templates, to discourage people from doing exactly that. Dex had no desire to risk ending up with an exploding assault rifle! But having access to legitimate templates...  
This was the sort of thing that made turians happy.  
Some more time passed. Finally, Dex was reasonably happy with the Mattock's set up. He closed off his omnitool and put the soldering iron back in its holder. He checked the gun over. It all looked in order. He keyed it to fold up and settled it in place on the other shoulder-slot.  
He took a nostalgic last look at the Phaeston. Stripped of its mods, it was now in a bit of a sad condition. He shook his head.  
There was a vacant crate nearby. Dex put the gun in there. Along with it he put in the components of his previous armour. Waste not, he thought, and want not. Both of them had resale value.  
Carrying the crate, Dex went back to re-join the Finch and Krondesh.  
The krogan noted his new gear. 'Someone's got changed,' he said.  
'I have been known to change my clothes,' Dex said.  
Krondesh made a sniffing gesture. 'Hope you remember to wash them, too.'  
The Finch was packing her assorted components into a box. 'Well,' she said, 'I reckon I have a good few thousand extra credits here.' She sounded pleased. 'This has actually worked out better than you might think.'  
Dex's omnitool pinged. 'Apparently I have a new message,' he said. 'Oh hello, it's Bray. Says he has some information. On Kat's whereabouts.'  
'Better go and meet him them, hadn't you?' Krondesh said.  
Dex shook his head ruefully. Micromanaged by a krogan. This was going to be a very strange day!

* * *

A little while later, Dex was meeting with Bray. The batarian was downstairs, in what was left of the lobby. He was overseeing Aria's clean-up teams. It was a surreal scene - clots of busy people bustled back and forth across the burned wreckage of the lobby. They carried boxes of items and armloads of OSDs, terminals and other evidence looted from the devastated offices. It was noisy. The whole space reverberated with chatter, bootsoles clinking and scrunching on broken glass and the rattling of over-filled crates.  
Bray had set himself up on the reception desk. Papers and files were spread across it. One row of notes were held down by the weight of his assault rifle.  
'Hi,' Dex said. 'I got your message.'  
Bray nodded, taking in Dex's new gear with a quick glance. 'I see you've been busy,' he said.  
Dex grinned, feeling his mandibles flex. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Turns out Kat had a lot of kit squirreled away up there.'  
Bray pulled up his omnitool. 'We've done some data work,' he said, 'on where Kat's ship went. Have a look at this.'  
He pulled up a glowing wireframe projection. The labels were all in batarian but to Dex's untrained eye, it looked like some sort of satellite system. The turian took a guess. 'Urdak and its moons?'  
Bray nodded. 'Correct. We tracked her ship to here.' The view zoomed in on one of the moons. 'Kalthis, to be precise.'  
'Never heard of it,' Dex said.  
The wireframe blinked out and was replaced by an actual image. Kalthis was a dull crescent, the nightside completely dark, the dayside stained a weak pink by Sahrabarik and pockmarked with craters. The terminator was blurry and Dex could see faint smears that might be clouds.  
'No reason why you would have,' Bray said. 'No-one's lived there for centuries. The moon itself is lifeless.'  
'It doesn't look inviting,' Dex said.  
'It's not a garden world,' the batarian said. 'Don't know much about it beyond that. Not really my department.'  
'So do we know where Kat went?'  
'That I can help you with,' Bray said. He tapped a key on his omnitool and the view zoomed in on part of the moon. A landscape surged into view. Dex saw a desolate landscape strewn with craters and low hills. Some of the craters were softened by pinkish-white drifts - whether snow or sand, Dex couldn't tell. There was a haze of windblown sand or snow hanging over the scene. Clearly there was some sort of atmosphere.  
The view zoomed in further. Amongst the rolling landscape, Dex was confronted by blocky, rectangular structures. Buildings. They were surrounded by a vaguely-defined area of debris - abandoned machines, crates and the collapsed remains of less easily-identifiable things. Off to one side was what looked like the wreck of an ancient shuttle. It lay on its side, with the prow sticking out of a deep drift.  
Right in the middle of the scene was a very modern intra-system ship, parked right next to the structures. The ship was surrounded by a blast-zone of exposed ground, the snow or sand apparently scoured away by its thrusters.  
'You see the ship,' Bray said.  
'Yes,' Dex said. 'How did you get this footage?'  
'We dropped a probe in,' Bray said. 'This image was the last thing it returned.'  
'The last thing?'  
The batarian nodded. 'It went offline moments later. When it did, one of our station-based telescopes picked up a faint flash from Kalthis.'  
'It was shot down?' Dex's mandibles flexed. This wasn't good.  
Bray nodded. 'As best we can tell. The flash could be consistent with GARDIAN-type point defence armaments. The telescopic data wasn't really good enough to be sure.'  
Dex peered at the omnitool image. 'It looks like that ship has a reg number,' he said.  
Bray nodded. 'Yes. It's blurry, but we managed to get a reading. It's owned by a corporate called Silyriam Exports. Registered on Illium. The Boss had it run past our accountants earlier.'  
'You mean the people doing the forensic audit?'  
Bray nodded. 'The very same. Turns out Silyriam is a front. It's shares are all owned by a company that's in turn majority-owned by Kat's operations here on Omega.'  
Dex's head hurt. 'That's confusing,' he said.  
Bray nodded. 'I think that's the idea. This way Kat's business has access to galactic markets. Without it being too obviously crooked. Anyway, the ship was docked here until very recently. It took off at pretty much the same time she vanished.'  
'So it's her,' Dex said.  
'As sure as we can be,' Bray agreed.  
'Is there any intel on the facility there? On Kalthis, I mean?'  
'A little bit,' Bray said. 'It's supposed to be abandoned, but it extends underground. The surface bit is ruinous, as you can see.' He pointed at one of the buildings. It had several large holes and long spars of its structural framework emerged, gaping out like ribs from a carcass. They cast long, stark shadows on the ground below them. 'However, the underground stuff might be in better condition. And the probe took an infrared image. Look at this.'  
He tapped another key. The picture flipped to a false-colour heat image. The facility was glowing brightly, surrounded by a softer corona of warmer ground. A ghost of heat surrounded the parked spacecraft with a luminescent halo. Beyond that, everything was the darkness of cold ice.  
'Something's warm under there,' Dex said.  
Bray nodded. 'This is consistent with a subsurface base,' he said. 'The heat's leaking up from the living quarters.'  
Dex shook his head. 'Why in the spirits' name has she holed up there?' It didn't make any obvious sense. Kalthis was the middle of nowhere.  
Bray frowned. 'No idea. Apparently this complex was originally for mining. Supposedly they thought there might be eezo on Urdak's moons. The Boss says no-one found any, or not enough to make the money work, and the miners all went bust. Leaving all their crap behind when they did. This would've been centuries ago.'  
'She's planning on going into the eezo mining business?'  
'Bird, your guess is as good as mine.' Bray looked irritated. Then he paused. Dex was reasonably sure that his facial expression was a thoughtful one, although the turian's ability to read batarian faces wasn't much better than that for humans or krogan.  
'What?' Dex asked.  
'Mind you,' Bray said, 'there are some funny rumours about Kalthis.'  
'Like what?'  
'There've been the odd sightings of unidentified ships near it,' Bray said. 'Some people on the extranet claim they're Collector vessels.'  
Dex frowned, mandibles clutching close to his face. 'Normally,' he said, 'I'd discount extranet crap as just that. Crap. But Kat has had dealings with the Collectors. Does T'Loak know anything about this?'  
Bray shrugged with a rattle of armour. 'Why would she? She doesn't want them on the station. But Kalthis isn't Omega. As far as she's concerned, the buggy bastards can do what they damn well like over there.'  
Collectors. Dex managed to repress a shudder. He didn't know much about them, but what he had seen made him not want to know anymore.  
Nearby someone was sweeping up some broken glass. Their brush hissed on the fragments. There was a clatter as a full dustpan was unloaded into a bin.  
Collectors - now there was a word to make a turian uneasy. A possible foe who were known to be technologically advanced, and seemingly had biotics, but other than that they were a complete blank. That would be tricky to plan. Maybe they'd get lucky and not run into them. Dex decided not to try to put any odds against that possibility.  
'So this is the sum total of what we know?' Dex asked.  
Bray nodded. 'Basically yes. Oh - we think Kat took a retinue with her. Four to eight individuals. Her favourite guards, we think.'  
'Four to eight?'  
'The surveillance footage we have isn't too clear,' Bray said. 'Crowded areas, badly-maintained cameras, gaps in the coverage. All the usual problems we have on this damn station. Anyway it's definitely not less than four, and definitely not more than eight.'  
'Weapons?' Dex asked.  
'Yes,' Bray said.  
Dex rolled his eyes. 'Specifically what weapons?'  
'We didn't see anything heavy. No grenade launchers or rockets. What they have seems to be a mix of shotguns and rifles. The footage isn't good enough to say what make, though.'  
Dex nodded slowly. Assume eight, then. Probably with M8s, based on what he'd seen of Kat's equipment distribution. She'd owned plenty of better stuff, but she'd never been generous with the good guns. As they'd seen earlier, the good guns were all in the armoury. If a merc guard could manage at all with a bargain-basement M8, that's what he'd have. Good old Kat - always the penny pincher!  
'The Boss,' Bray said, 'will make an in-system cruiser available for you. I'll send you the docking bay number and the departure time when it's all set up.'  
A ship? Well, maybe that was promising.  
'Will the ship give us covering fire?' Dex asked.  
Bray snorted. 'It'll be staying safely in orbit, bird. The Boss is being generous, but she's not being that generous. Ships don't come cheap, you know. You can take a shuttle down. It's up to you how you handle it once you're on the ground.'  
'A shuttle against a GARDIAN system?' Dex asked. 'Really?' That didn't sound good. He felt a fresh stirring of apprehension.  
Bray shrugged. 'Land below the horizon and take a long walk. Or come in low and try and stay below their radar. Whatever. The details are up to you.'  
Dex ground his teeth, but he realised this was all they were going to be offered. Realistically it was too much to hope that T'Loak's organisation would do all the heavy lifting for them.  
'Okay,' he said. 'I'll let everyone else know. We’ll be ready when you call for us.'


	19. Sunwards to Kalthis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A journey away from the station is begun. Dex is surprised by the quiet. Details are discussed. Some possibilities are considered. Gravity remains a problem, particularly for Krondesh.

The interior of a spacecraft was different from the interior of the space station, Dex noted. The cruiser was called the Amarei. Its corridors and rooms were smaller than Omega's, but they felt less cramped. The ship was tidy and free of clutter. All the loose items it carried had their own bins and lockers, in which they were securely stowed. The ship's air processing systems were better-maintained than Omega's. The air was cool, fresh and dry. The biggest surprise, though, was the sound.  
The Amarei was quiet.  
There were the faint background sounds of mechanical systems and of whirring fans, but it was at a lower volume. With good maintenance, there were fewer loose cowlings, fewer damaged housing and fewer loose screws. Thus there was less rattling, less groaning and less creaking. The relative quiet demonstrated just how wealthy Aria's organisation was.  
Dex found himself wondering if there was a gap between her rhetoric about the costs of maintaining Omega and the realities of what she did. Could more be done - was the station in the sorry half-functional state that it was in because only the bare minimum was being done? Or was it the case that there was just no comparison in costs between a single spacecraft with a crew of eight and a giant station with a population in the millions? The turian felt confused.  
Economics, Dex had to acknowledge, was not his speciality.  
Dex, Krondesh and the Finch were sharing a four-bunk cabin on what passed for the ship's crew deck. The room was small. At one end was a bath and shower cubicle, with a door opening straight onto the narrow aisle. The bunks ran along each of the walls. The door to the main crew corridor was at the other end. The whole scene was lit by a single strip-lamp running down the metal ceiling.  
Dex was sat on one bunk, facing the Finch, who was sat on the one opposite. Krondesh wasn't in the room. He was currently off in the vehicle bay on the deck beneath, having a look at the rover that the Amarei carried.  
'I've been doing my homework,' the Finch said. Her omnitool was glowing. A hologram of the moon floated over it.  
'What have you found?' Dex asked.  
She shrugged. 'Kalthis is fairly boring.'  
'Probably true,' Dex said, 'but I need some specifics. Apparently I'm supposed to be planning this operation.'  
She nodded. 'It's actually a bit bigger than the Earth, but it's composed more of light, rocky elements, so the density is lower.'  
'I've never been to Earth, so that doesn't mean a thing to me.'  
'Don't, it's not worth it. Totally overrated.  
Dex snorted with a twitch of his mandibles. 'Glad to see your patriotism is on fine form this morning.'  
'Patriotism?' she said, rolling her eyes. 'I've been accused of many things, but that's a new one.'  
Dex felt a need to try and get back on track. 'Kalthis,' he said.  
'Yes, Kalthis. It's rocky, pretty cold and uninhabited.' She raised her omnitool, summoning a holo of the moon.  
Dex leaned closer. 'That's odd. One side's really shiny.'  
The moon had a distinct split between its hemispheres. One side was greyish and cratered, softened a little with some smudges of cloud and a faint bluish haze toward the edge of the disc. A signature of atmosphere, Dex supposed. The other hemisphere was a stark, shiny white. It was the featureless white of smooth ice, stained pink by the light of Sahrabarik.  
The Finch nodded. 'It's an ice cap. Carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, some water ice. That hemisphere permanently faces away from Urdak, so it's the coldest part of the moon. It's almost always below the freezing temperature for all of those molecules.'  
'Does Urdak bring in that much heat?'  
'More than you'd think,' the Finch said. 'The other side of the moon, the one with all the clouds and stuff? In places it actually sometimes nudges above freezing, once in a while. There's even been some recorded rainfall.'  
Dex blinked. 'That's surprising,' he said.  
'It's why these moons are rocky, not iceballs,' the Finch said. 'When Urdak was much younger, it would've been far hotter. And it would have pushed evaporated the light, volatile stuff. Pushed it outside the frost line.'  
'If it was warmer in the past,' Dex said, 'was it ever habitable?'  
The Finch shook her head. 'There's no evidence that any of Urdak's moons ever supported life. I had a look through the files. When the miners were digging around through the crust of this one, they didn't find any microbes or any fossils.'  
'What were they looking for?' Dex asked.  
'Eezo,' she said. 'Apparently there's trace amounts of it on the surfaces of some of the moons. People thought there might be subterranean deposits. Turns out there isn't.'  
'Where does the surface stuff come from, then?'  
'Best guess,' the Finch said, 'is it's actually from Omega. When that collision cracked the asteroid open, millennia ago, it also must've dumped some eezo fragments out. And some of them gradually made their way in-system, dusted across various inner bodies. Not enough to be useful but enough to fool careless mining companies.'  
'So they dug a load of tunnels, wasted a ton of credits and went bust?' Dex asked.  
The Finch nodded. 'Basically yes.'  
'So, atmosphere. What are we dealing with here?'  
'Nothing useful,' the Finch said. 'It's a mix of argon and nitrogen - neither of those freeze out, even on the cold face. The pressure is low, about ninety millibars.'  
'Not much,' Dex said. 'I thought this was a big moon?'  
'It is, but it's not very dense. There's relatively little heavy stuff in its composition. It doesn't have the sort of big massive nickel-iron cores that planets like Earth have. Kalthis is more dominated by carbonates and silicates. The surface gravity is only about forty-four percent of standard.'  
Dex nodded. Point four four standard. That would be an important number to remember. It had implications for everything from walking and running to ballistic arcs and targetting. He filed the data-point away for future reference. He'd had training in how to account for this stuff back in the Army; he was going to have to revise the details.  
'I'm right in thinking, aren't I,' he said, 'that Kat's hidey-hole is in the Urdak-facing hemisphere?'  
The Finch nodded. 'Yes, it is. One of the warmest parts of the moon. We can expect temperatures between about minus thirty and maybe minus ten. And we'll be getting there only a dozen hours short of local midday.'  
'A dozen hours?'  
'Oh - the moon's tide-locked. So it's day is also its orbital period. Eight point three standard days.'  
Dex nodded slowly. That made sense of the dozen hours comment, then.  
'I have to figure out a way for us to get there,' he said, 'to the base, I mean. Unobserved.'  
The Finch frowned. 'I don't know if it's relevant...' she began.  
'Spit it,' Dex said.  
'Kalthis's orbit lies in almost exactly the same plane as Urdak's,' she said. 'That means it gets a total solar eclipse, reliable as clockwork. Happens around midday every day.'  
That sounded like it had some possibilities. 'How long does it last?'  
'Quite a while,' the Finch said. 'Can vary a little, due to various factors. But the average is fifty-five minutes.'  
Dex's mandibles flared. 'That's ages!'  
She shrugged. 'Urdak looks quite big in the sky,' she said. 'And Sahrabarik's apparent motion is quite slow. Eight days of day, and all of that. So you get long and leisurely eclipses.'  
'There'll still be light from the brown dwarf.'  
'Yes, but not as much. And it'll be deep and reddish.'  
Dex thought quickly. 'So if something's painted in blue colours, it'll seem almost black?'  
She nodded. 'Yeah, I suppose so.'  
'I need to go and talk to Krondesh,' Dex said. 'Because I think I have the beginnings of a plan here.'  
'Okay,' she said. 'I'm going to catch up on my messages, then.'  
He looked puzzled.  
She said, 'While I've been running around with you two, I've been neglecting my business a bit. Some of my clients are getting nervous.'  
'Isn't that a bit ... irrelevant now?' Dex asked. 'We are all sort of in danger of becoming millionaires soon.'  
She shook her head. 'Maybe. But we live on Omega. You're never more than one hacked bank away from penury, you know. I'd be stupid not to hang onto a financial lifeline. And anyway, the reward money is theoretical until we have a Kat in a bag, isn't it?'  
Those were a depressingly good points.  
'Come and find me when you're ready,' she said.  
Dex nodded, and stood up.  
A short journey through the ship's small confines brought him to the vehicle bay. It was a compact space, walled and floored with metal panelling and lit overhead by stark white lamps. The mechanical sounds of the Amarei were louder here. They were much closer to the main engines. Dex could feel their steady rumble through the floor.  
Krondesh was examining the rover.  
It took Dex one look to know what it was. The Amarei was carrying an M30 rover, the civilian equivalent to an M35 Mako. The rover had been retrofitted for a small turret. Dex wasn't entirely sure he'd want to rely on that gun for any serious work. The metal had spots of corrosion and the turret appeared to have been mounted slightly off centre.  
'The gun doesn't look good,' Dex noted, walking over to where Krondesh was stood.  
The krogan turned his black-armoured bulk, bringing his familiar purple plates into view. 'No,' he agreed, 'it doesn't, does it?'  
'What about the rest of it?' Dex asked.  
'I can't see any obvious problems,' Krondesh said. He kicked a tire. His boot made a solid thud on impact. 'Tires are firm. Suspension looks okay. All the wiring's connected to where it should be, inside, I mean.'  
Dex blinked. 'You've done this before.'  
'The school,' Krondesh said, 'back in the valley. Some of the other hatchlings were learning engineering. The Clan Lord didn't know what to make of us, but he liked getting his tomkahs serviced on the cheap.'  
'Was that one of the reasons he was actually upset, when the asari died?'  
Krondesh nodded. 'As well as it being Frogs that did it, yes. Anyway he used to send us the tomkahs to patch up. I helped out when I wasn't in lessons. I picked up a few things. I'm not an expert, but I know where the key problems are.'  
Krondesh was a krogan of hidden depths. They were lucky, Dex had to acknowledge, to have him.  
'Can it stand up to minus thirty Celsius and only ninety millibars of atmosphere?'  
Krondesh scrutinised him. 'So you're thinking of going in this way?'  
'If the Amarei tries to land anywhere nearby,' Dex said, 'they're bound to see us. I can't believe that Kat won't have sensors dotted around near the base.'  
'A ship is a prominent target,' Krondesh agreed.  
'Yeah. And you're right. It looks like there's a GARDIAN system down there. Dropping the Amarei down could be a bad, bad idea. If we get shot down, fuck only knows how we're getting home.'  
'Yeah, I don't fancy growing old on Kalthis,' Krondesh agreed. 'It sounds like it's a bit shit down there.'  
And that was assuming they even managed to survive a crash landing, Dex mused. He kept that cheery thought to himself.  
Overhead the ventilation grates muttered and hissed. To Krondesh, Dex said, 'My idea is this. The Amarei drops us in the M30, somewhere below the horizon. Relative to the base, I mean.'  
'Would need to be quite a way out if they're not to see the ship,' Krondesh said.  
Dex nodded. 'Yeah. But we can drive a long way in twelve hours.'  
'Twelve -?' The krogan stared. 'What exactly are you planning?'  
'Our finchy friend's been doing her homework,' Dex said. 'Apparently the local astronomy is set up so that the moon gets daily total eclipses. Courtesy of Urdak. We'll be arriving about a dozen hours short of one. My plan is that we can time our arrival at the base so that it's dark when we get there.'  
Understanding dawned in the krogan's eyes. 'Okay, that makes some sense,' he allowed. 'If they don't see us coming, they probably won't shoot us.'  
'And the GARDIAN lasers will be oriented upwards, toward the sky. We should be able to arrive underneath their cover.'  
'How far can we get in twelve hours?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex shrugged. 'On a flat road I know an M35 can do anything up to about one hundred and thirty kilometres per hour. With the terrain on Kalthis, I reckon we might manage ten to twenty. Either way we can get away with putting ourselves down a hundred and twenty kilometres out - safely below the horizon from the base.'  
Krondesh nodded. 'And if we get lucky and arrive early, we can always just park somewhere and count rocks. Or something. Not that we will be early, of course.'  
'The krogan is a cynic.'  
'The bird belabours the obvious.'  
Dex had to acknowledge that Krondesh was probably right. 'The gravity is a lot lower than what we're used to,' he said. 'Less than half, in fact.'  
'I'm not used to low gravity,' Krondesh said. 'That said, if stuff weighs less, it should make my shockwaves kick better.'  
An idea occured to Dex. 'In a moment,' he said, 'I'm going to wander up to the bridge and see if I can talk them into turning down the gravity on the ship. To the same level. If we have a chance to get used to it first, that could be good.'  
Krondesh nodded. 'Sensible,' he said. 'What do you mean, in a minute?'  
'Do you think they have any paint lying around?'  
'There's a locker over there,' Krondesh said, pointing to the other side of the vehicle bay. 'Hull maintenance stuff.'  
'Good,' Dex said. 'If you can, see if there's any blue paint.'  
'Why?' The krogan looked suspicious.  
'Because a dark blue M30 will be very hard to spot in the light of Urdak,' Dex said.  
Krondesh groaned. 'You've just volunteered me to repaint it, haven't you?'  
Dex grinned. 'This is the danger of outsourcing your organising to a turian.'  
With that parting shot, he turned and marched off.  
Dex's next trip took him out of the vehicle bay and up a ladder. He walked along the crew deck corridor all the way to the back of the small dining room. He went past the narrow galley kitchen, then up another ladder. As Dex climbed the ladder, he could hear the cook swearing loudly in the kitchen, and clattering and banging with some random implements. Somehow Dex got a feeling that dinner might be late.  
It took him into the grandly-named bridge.  
The ship's capacity consisted of nine crew and up to four passengers. Two of the crew were engineers; they were down with the engines, the eezo core and the main reactor, continually monitoring their progress. There was the foul-mouthed cook, who Dex knew was a batarian. Other than that he'd never spoken to the man. There were two more engineers who specialised in life support and plumbing, and who dealt with nothing else. These were critical functions on any spacecraft, hence the fact there were two of them and that they had no other jobs.  
The remaining three were the flight crew.  
There was the comms specialist, a testy and overworked salarian who was responsible for keeping the ship in touch both with Omega and any other vessels it might encounter, and the astrogator, who was responsible for celestial navigation. The latter, Dex had gathered, also doubled as a sensor technician. She also apparently tripled as the ship's system administrator, responsible for keeping a watchful eye on the various VI systems.  
The overall authority was Captain Eireun Tareal, who was a middle-aged batarian woman. She had a distinct air of world-weary resignation hanging over her, like she'd seen all of this before and nothing else would surprise her. Her jaded air had set Dex's nerves on edge at first. Still, she'd come highly recommended by Bray, and somehow Dex doubted that T'Loak's organisation would hang onto an incompetent, let alone praise them. What he'd seen of her performance so far had given him no cause for complaint.  
At the top of the ladder, he knocked on the raised door of the hatch. Doubtless the captain had heard him climbing up, with his boots ringing on the rungs, but it felt inconsiderate not to announce his presence.  
'Come in,' she said.  
Dex entered the bridge.  
It was a compact space, filled with blinking lights, switches, dials and impenetrable VI displays. Three big segmented windows were at the front, with a bland starscape beyond. The whole space was roughly triangular in shape, with the captain's chair at the apex and the other two further back. The entry-hatch was in the middle.  
'Hello,' Dex said awkwardly. He had to stifle a momentary urge to salute. Something about the captain's manner reminded him of some officers he'd dealt with.  
Tareal nodded back, regarding him with all four eyes. 'Have you made up your mind what you want to do?' she asked.  
'We have a tentative plan,' Dex said. 'We might need to borrow some of your paint, though.'  
Tareal's face betrayed no surprise. 'You've decided on the M30, then.'  
'You know?'  
A ghost of a smile crossed her face. 'I overheard you talking to the human. There aren't many secrets on spacecraft this small.'  
Dex resisted an urge to kick himself, clamping his mandibles as tight to his face as he could. That was obvious in hindsight!  
'Yeah,' he said. 'We'll go in on the ground. Is it still your judgement that we shouldn't go FTL on the way in?'  
Tareal nodded. 'Definitely. They'll pick up this ship's blue-shifted radiation with no trouble. If we do that we might as well just call them and tell them we're coming.  
'They'd already discussed this, but Dex had felt he might as well check it again. 'And we can't go too fast on the way in,' he said, 'because they'll see that drive flare as well.'  
Captain Tareal nodded. 'Yes. This is why it's going to take eighty-three hours to reach Kalthis.'  
Dex flexed his mandibles, but nodded in recognition. 'What I was going to ask was, would you mind dropping the gravity to forty-four percent?'  
'Why?'  
'We could do with some practise in Kalthis-like conditions,' Dex said. 'It's been years since I've done this sort of thing. And goodness knows whether the other two have any relevant experience.'  
The turian had expected more argument, but Tareal just nodded. 'Okay,' she said. 'I suppose it saves us some power costs for the rest of the trip, so why not?'  
Surprised at the unexpected lack of obstruction, Dex returned to bring Krondesh and the Finch the news. He felt the internal gravity lighten as he climbed down the ladder. A few moments more brought him back to the vehicle bay.  
Krondesh was looking pleased with himself.  
'I found a spraying drone,' he told Dex.  
Sure enough, the small space was filled with the whirr of the drone's eezo motors. The little machine was moving backwards and forwards, laying down trails of dark blue paint over the M30. It was making fast work of the exposed area.  
'Okay,' Dex said, nodding once in approval.  
Krondesh's eyes narrowed. 'Oh,' he said.  
'Oh?'  
'Dex the turian went upstairs,' Krondesh said. 'From the look in your eyes, Dex the platoon sergeant came back down again.'  
Dex wondered if he was really that transparent. It would seem the answer was yes.  
'You want us to do something, don't you?' Krondesh said.  
Dex realised he'd been about to treat Krondesh and the Finch as if they were turian trainees. That approach wasn't going to work here. The likelihood of either of them following orders unquestioningly was small to the point of invisibility. He needed to think of something else.  
'I figured,' he said, 'that it might be useful if we all got some low-gravity experience. I had the crew dial it down.'  
The krogan looked sceptical. He was about to say something when they heard boots on the ladder, clanging downwards.  
The Finch dropped to the floor at the bottom of it. She said, 'The turian's right. It's a good idea.'  
Krondesh looked confused. 'Why? Gravity is gravity.'  
The Finch rolled her eyes. 'But weight isn't weight. And it's definitely not mass. Your weight might be point four four what you're used to, but your mass is just the same. You'll get a nice sense of lightness running along in a straight line, but see what happens when you try to pull a corner.' She shook her head. 'The first time I left Earth was a trip to our Moon. The cities have artificial gravity. But if you go out on the surface - well, let's put it this way. My mass to weight ratio was off by a factor of six from what I'm used to. Inertia's a bitch, particularly when it sends you careening face first into the dust.' She hesitated, looking embarrassed. 'Not that I actually did that. Honest.'  
Krondesh still looked sceptical. 'So we've dropped the gravity to stop the mammal falling over? Well, I guess that's nice.'  
'Try it then,' Dex said, having a moment of inspiration. Krondesh's distrustful streak had come to the surface, he realised. The krogan needed to see this to believe it. 'Try running around the M30, like you would if this was Omega.'  
Krondesh shrugged. 'All right.' He turned to the M30 and broke into a lumbering run, boots clanging on the deck. He got to the side of the vehicle and tried to turn -  
His feet slid out from under him.  
The floor shook as the krogan fell over. He rolled to one side and managed to stop just short of the wall. Looking startled, Krondesh pulled himself into a sitting position.  
'Fuck,' he said. 'What happened?' He stared disbelievingly at the M30. 'Did you grease the floor or something?'  
It wasn't a serious accusation, Dex knew. Rather the krogan was just releasing his frustration.  
Carefully, Dex said, 'Your body and your gear weigh less. So you instinctively applied less force when you tried to corner. But your inertia hasn't changed - there wasn't enough force to properly counter it! So instead of turning, you stumbled and fell over.'  
The krogan glared. Then his glower moderated and he looked thoughtful. 'You know,' he said, 'the first few weeks after I arrived on Omega, I was pretty clumsy. Kept dropping things and walking into stuff. At the time I thought I was just really distracted - you know, after the fuck-ups on Tuchanka. I wonder if it was something like this, though?'  
The Finch's omnitool was out and beeping. She pursed her lips, frowning at the display. 'Yeah,' she said. 'It's possible. Tuchanka's gravity is fourteen percent higher than Omega's internal field. it probably took a while to get used to it.'  
Krondesh sighed and pulled himself to his feet with a rattle of armour plate. 'All right, army boy,' he said to Dex. 'You've made your point. But if you're secretly videoing all of this for the extranet, do beware I'll have to murder you.'  
'No videos,' Dex said. 'Definitely no videos.'  
Dex's proposition set the activity for the next couple of days. They started off with simple enough exercises, like repeating Krondesh's running or bouncing a ball off of the wall and trying to catch it again. At first they proved surprisingly difficult in the lower gravity. Whilst Krondesh's skid-and-collapse wasn't repeated, nonetheless taking the corners around the M30 took concentration. As for the ball, it tended to bounce further than expected. In the lower gravity, the same throw could take it much further.  
Once the paint was dried on the M30, they moved it to the far end of the vehicle bay. That gave them just enough space for Dex to rig an improvised firing range.  
Temporarily refitting their guns with dummy ammo blocks, they were able to get some practise in low gravity shooting. Again there were some differences, from longer ballistic arcs to the perceived increase in recoil on the guns. There was, after all, less weight to hold them down. Dex actually considered modifying his new assault rifle with an extra stability damper, but in the end he decided he didn't want to lose either the barrel extension or the extra thermal capacity. Those considerations put an end to that idea.  
When they weren't practising - Dex was careful to avoid the word "training", in case its military connotations went astray - the turian spent his time making plans. He'd got hold of the most recent set of high-resolution imagery of Kalthis.  
Unfortunately, "most recent" turned out to mean "thirty-eight years old". Kalthis really was the middle of nowhere. It had been a long time since anyone had felt the need to visit it. That last visit had come in the form of a brief expedition from the archaeology department at Kima College. Apparently the pointy-heads had taken a brief interest in the industrial pre-history of the Sahrabarik System. It appeared few others had shared their interest - although a paper had eventually found its way into the galactic journals it ahd apparently sunk without trace. However, it had left behind an archive of high-res imaging when the department's rented ship had mapped the moon.  
Dex had resolved that when all this was over, and he had enough money to be a bit generous, Kima were going to get a nice fat donation.  
Using the images he determined a drop zone for the M30 and worked out a plausible route. The site of Kat's new lair was in the middle of an old and very large crater. The mineworkings were built into the side of the crater's central spire. The crater rim formed a ring of eroded peaks surrounding it at a radius of eight kilometres. Dex didn't even want to think about how big the rock that had made this one was.  
According to the archaeologists, the mining company who dug this complex may have thought that the impactor was a fragment of Omega. That would explain why they'd gone looking for eezo in the middle of a big impact feature.  
Dex identified a pass they could use through the crater-ring. The inside of the crater was partly-filled with ice, a side-effect of Kalthis's gradual snowfall and very occasional rain. At first the idea of driving across a flat icerink didn't fill Dex with any glee. However, careful scrutiny revealed a possible way through.  
At one point in the past, the land on one side of the crater had dropped by several metres relative to the other side. The Kalthis's core still had a small molten layer, right at the bottom, and that narrow lava rind was still cooling, shrinking and solidifying, even now after twelve billion years. As it did, the cooling caused the moon to contract slightly. Every now and then, the build-up of pressure would trigger moonquakes. They weren't frequent events - Kalthis was mostly quite dead, in geological terms - but over long periods of time, even rare events could add up. It was one of these that had rearranged the crater.  
Luckily, for most of its length, the resultant ice-scarp would hide them from the base. They could drive along in its shadow, hopefully unseen.  
As for the base itself, there was less information available. Apparently there was a system of tunnels dug by the ancient mining company, along with some living quarters and some industrial areas. There had been some sort of landing pad nearby, but no trace of that remained now. Other than that, nothing remained.  
'It won't be in good condition,' the Finch said, when Dex asked her to look over his plans. She'd seemed very surprised that he'd asked for a second opinion, but to him this was perfectly normal. As long as the other opinion-holder did what they were told when the shots started flying, Dex had no problem with looking for more information.  
'What do you mean?' he asked.  
'When we spoke to Aria she didn't saying anything about Kalthis having an atmosphere or weather,' the Finch said. 'In fact it sounded like everything was just in vacuum.'  
'I wonder why she missed that,' Dex said.  
'I suppose she has no reason to care about Urdak's moons,' the Finch said. 'I mean, they're not Omega, right? She's probably never even been there. Anyway, the point is, it can rain on Kalthis. Not often, but it does happen. And there's ice in the crater basin.'  
'So?'  
'So chances are, the underground base might have meltwater issues. Particularly if it's dozens of degrees warmer than the surrounding rock.'  
Dex frowned. 'Wouldn't it be warmer underground?'  
'This is Kalthis,' the Finch reminded him. 'It's twelve billion years old. There isn't much internal heat left. Yes there's some molten stuff but it's a long, long way down.'  
Dex's mandibles shifted. He frowned. He remembered the pumping station on Omega. 'They must have pumps,' he said.  
'I wouldn't be surprised,' the Finch said, 'if part of the reason the mining company dug here was a local supply of water. Kalthis is pretty dry overall, so that's at a premium. But yes, you're right. There'll be pumps. Probably just pumping everything back out onto the ice, in the hope that it freezes again.'  
And idea struck. 'If there are pumps,' Dex said, 'they'll need maintenance access to them.'   
'What are you suggesting?'  
'If we find where they're putting out their garbage,' he said, 'that will be our back door into the base. There'll have to be an airlock somewhere nearby.'  
'Oh,' the Finch said, enlightenment dawning. 'I see.'  
The beginnings of a plan was developing.


	20. Storm of the Century

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kalthis, that spirits-damned moon, plays a blinder. A krogan, a turian and a human have to deal with all the weather that an inadequate atmosphere can set up. Torrential rainfall poses some awkward practical problems.
> 
> After some difficulty, Kat’s lair is approached…

With a krogan, a human and a turian canned up inside it, the interior of the M30 felt small. Dex was sat at the front, on the gunner's seat, with Krondesh parked next to him. The krogan was strapped into the driver's seat. He kept elbowing Dex - not deliberately, but just because there wasn't enough room. Every movement risked bringing a body part into unexpected contact with someone else.  
Apparently the designers of this vehicle had not accounted for krogan bulk when they planned the seats.  
The worst thing of all was, technically, this was a four-seat vehicle. The Finch was sat behind them, in one of the two passenger seats. Their guns and other gear were filling a bag strapped onto the remaining seat. Dex dreaded to think what it would be like with four people in here. Cramped wouldn't even begin to cover it.  
The odd thing was, though, that all of this felt familiar. Dex had many memories of being cooped up in the back of crowded troop transports, sat knee-to-knee with other turian soldiers, packed in like dextro sardines. He could remember any number of hard seats, tight straps digging into his plates and being jolted and jounced around as poorly-suspended vehicles rattled their way across rough terrain. Really, this experience was like being back in the Army. Except with aliens as allies instead of enemies.  
The inside of the M30 even had that familiar, bitter smell of oils, engine coolants and cleaning agents.  
'You need to turn left,' the Finch was saying. 'Seriously, we're off course.'  
'No we're not,' Krondesh said. 'You were wrong. We turned past that crater-'  
'No we didn't. That was a different crater!'  
Since Krondesh apparently knew how to drive, Dex had put him behind the controls. Tuchanka’s rough terrain would be useful experience for Kalthis’s road-free surface. Since she was detail-oriented, analytical and good at interpreting visual displays, he'd given the Finch the map and the sensor console. He'd given himself the gun turret. He had the most experience with these things and he wasn't sure how well calibrated it was. Best to have it in expert hands, he'd thought. Krondesh had snorted and announced that it was typical that the turian gave himself the weapons and everyone else the work. But he'd sat himself behind the haptic panels without further argument, so Dex had counted it as a points victory.  
'Oh fuck this snow,' the Finch growled. 'No, we definitely passed the crater!'  
'All right, fine!' the krogan growled. 'Have it your way! But if we get lost, you get to explain that to Aria.'  
He thumped the controls. The M30 turned back onto its course.  
The M30's forward canopy was dirty with dust and snow. The windscreen wipers were keeping two open fans of visibility, but it was a continual battle. Dex could hear them scraping back and forth against the plastic material of the canopy. The team had already run into Kalthis's first surprise - a blizzard.  
They'd been on the moon for several hours. The Amarei had dropped the M30 off at the proposed landing zone. The rover's eezo core was big enough to allow for a running drop, like military ships often did with M35 Makos. That hadn't prevented them from landing with a hard bump, though. Dex had greatly enjoyed it. Krondesh had let rip with a string of particularly-virulent Tuchankan swearwords. The Finch had looked momentarily terrified, then had shaken her head and had muttered something under her breath.  
At first their journey had proceeded without too much trouble. Kalthis's surface was greyish, sooty and desolate. The landscape was pockmarked with craters of various sizes, strewn with boulders and broken rocks and interrupted here and there by ranges of low, rolling hills. The sky was tired and dusty pink, a white haze near the horizon shading to a deep red directly overhead. Urdak was visible near the zenith, a fat oval with a thin daylight crescent and a clearly-visible nightside.  
The nightside glowed a deep ruddy shade, marked with hot orange-yellow whorls and darker carmine bands. There was a vague cellular pattern half-veiled by all the storms, cells with brighter centres and darker edges.   
The Finch had got excited, telling them at great length how they were actually looking at giant convection cells in the brown dwarf, structures that actually reached all the way down toward its centre, and above that storm systems formed of refractory dust and droplets of molten metal. The ovular shape of Urdak, she said, was down to its fast rotation speed. Eleven hours, apparently - fast enough that it made the brown dwarf bulge out at its equator, as if the very stuff of the failed star was straining to escape.  
As they'd driven, the sunlight crescent had narrowed. The small pinkish disc that was Sahrabarik was closing in on the brown dwarf. The daily eclipse was due soon.  
Then the moon had delivered a surprise.  
Three hours into their drive, they had noticed a growing cloudiness in the sky. Looking at the sensor readouts, the Finch said that temperatures outside were going up. It was now only minus ten degrees Celsius - for Kalthis, that was literally tropical. The haziness in the sky had turned into thin streamers of cloud, and then those streamers had thickened. Before long, Urdak and Sahrabarik were only intermittently visible amongst the thickening gloom.  
Then it had started snowing.  
Apparently Kalthis had picked today to drop some weather on them. Dex had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the snowstorm was giving them some additional cover. On the other hand, it was making driving rather troublesome. Kat and her allies couldn't see them in this weather, but they couldn't see where they were going either.  
Dex said, 'What are conditions like out there?'  
Behind him, the Finch peered at her readouts. 'The snow's got heavier.'  
'I could've told you that,' Krondesh rumbled. In front of them, the windscreen wipers groaned across the canopy, pushing off a fresh load of snow. The hiss-shush sound of the wiper blades conducted in through the glass.  
The Finch ignored him. 'Windspeed's picked up. Eight kilometres per hour now. But it's changed direction again - it's south west, not south-easterly. The air pressure was falling earlier, but it's levelled off now. May actually have picked up a little. Basically we seem to have run into Kalthis's version of a warm front.'  
'Bloody moon,' Krondesh said. 'Why can't it just behave itself and stay freezing?'  
'Any danger of rain?' Dex asked.  
'Jesus, I hope not,' the Finch said. 'I don't really know, to be honest.' She sounded puzzled. 'I guess the front must have passed over us now. So from what I know, the temperatures should fall back a bit. And the precipitation - the snow - should decline.'  
'You sound unsure.'  
'Look, I'm not an expert on the weather. Least of all Kalthis's. It could do anything for all I know.'  
If he listened carefully, Dex could hear the wind. There was enough atmosphere outside to carry the sound. It was mostly lost in the internal noises of the M30, the electric whir of its motors, the growl of its wheels and the hissing of the wiper blades. But there was a quiet, uneasy moaning, the sigh of the moon's winds as they whistled around the mechanical intruder.  
More snow was falling outside. With all the cloud, it was darker than Dex would have liked. The M30 rolled forward, tires crunching through the fallen drifts.  
They drove on in silence for a time. Finally, an indistinct, hazy shape became apparent in the murk. It lay low across the horizon, highest in front of them and falling off into the distance.  
'I think that might be the crater wall,' Dex said.  
'Should we slow down?' Krondesh asked.  
'The eclipse will start soon,' the Finch said. 'Might be a good idea to get as far through the pass as we can - before it gets dark. Darker, I mean.'  
She had a point. Groping through what was effectively a mountain pass in the dark could be bad.  
'We go through,' Dex decided.  
As they approached the crater wall, the land rose. Soon the M30 was picking its way up a cracked, boulder-strewn slope of exposed rock. The wind had scoured away the snow here, although it still fell from the leaden skies. In the lea of the crater wall, there was less of it.  
The Finch was frowning.  
'What?' Dex asked her.  
'Temperatures are still going up,' she said. 'Minus five now.'  
'Something else is bothering you, isn't it?'  
'The wind is blowing from in front of us,' she said. 'According to the maps, this is the highest side of the crater wall. The far side is more broken down and eroded. Probably from the wind, I guess.'  
'So that means it's calmer here,' Dex said. 'Because it's all piling up on the opposite side of this.' He waved a hand at the rough, sloping rockscape before them.  
'Yes,' she said. 'But it also might mean a warmer, more sheltered microclimate on the other side of the wall. Where warmer air can pool, and heat up.'  
'Heat up?'  
'Yes,' she said. 'And also get forced against a cliff face. It's possible it could be above freezing on the other side there.'  
'Oh no,' Krondesh groaned.  
'Yeah,' she said. 'It wouldn't surprise me if it was raining on the other side.'  
'Oh for...' Dex's mandibles flared. 'Rain? Seriously?'  
'I don't know, but it seems possible,' she said. Something beeped. She looked down. 'Oh - temperatures just went up again. Minus four now.'  
The shape of the pass was looming in front of them. It was a V-shaped notch in the rock. A long fracture line ran out below it, winding away toward the uneven plane behind them. Dex guessed that the pass had been opened by the same ancient moonquake that had made the ice-scarp on the far side. The two things met up, so it seemed plausible.  
The bottom of the V was part-filled with pebbles and debris. It wasn't a great surface, but it was flat enough that the M30 could crawl forward over it. Pebbles hissed and skidded and sprayed out from under the tires. Dex tried spinning up the eezo core to reduce the vehicle's weight, but to his surprise, that made the problem worse. When they weighed less, they also had less traction on the loose gravel. He spun the core down again.  
Krondesh kept them on a forward course.  
They wound their way through the pass, negotiating a few uncomfortably-sharp bends.  
'The eclipse will be starting now,' the Finch said.  
'How long until full dark?' Dex asked.  
'There'll be a twilight interval,' the Finch said. 'It should last about ten minutes. Then we lose Sahrabarik, and we're at Urdak's mercy.'  
That sounded ominous.  
They were just approaching the end of the pass when the light started to fail. Dex didn't notice it initially, but he happened to look up as there was a momentary clearing in the cloud. Sahrabarik's small pink disc had a bite taken out of the side of it.  
'Oh,' he said. 'Looks like we're under way. Krondesh, stop.'  
The whirring of the motors dropped in pitch and the sense of motion disappeared. They were no longer moving.  
'We'll wait,' Dex said. 'When the shadows descend - then we start moving again.'  
Dex was familiar with eclipses from his earlier life on Palaven. With two decent-sized moons, eclipses were regular events. The strange thing was, you didn't usually start to notice how dark it was until quite late in the eclipse. The iris would keep pace with the growing darkness for as long as it could, expanding until it couldn't anymore.  
The light was failing. As Dex watched, the shadows around them deepened. He looked up. Through a chink in the cloud, Sahrabarik was visible as a tiny pink sliver, still peeping out past the brown dwarf.  
'Okay,' Dex said, 'now's the best time for us to go.'  
'Uh,' Krondesh asked, 'how am I going to navigate in the dark?'  
Dex reached over and tapped a key on the krogan's haptic keyboard. A new holograph sprung up.  
'Infrared camera,' Dex told him. 'I assume you don't use them much on Tuchanka?'  
Krondesh scowled. 'Thermal cams aren't so useful on a planet without mammals, army boy,' he said.  
Dex sat back. He checked the controls for the turrets in front of him. There was nothing unusual currently registering on his own thermal screens.  
The M30 edged its way out of the pass. The interior of the crater was before them. It wasn't entirely dark. An unpleasant, ruddy twilight leaked through the clouds above. Occasionally a gap in the cloud would let in a long, crepuscular streamer of Urdak-light. They were ominous, bloody lights.  
The crater floor was filled with a lake of ice, as Dex had known. Here and there were boulders and pebbles, fragments of the eroding rock of the crater walls. The surface of the ice wasn't smooth - wind and time had sculpted it into peaks and troughs, and drifts of snow lay piled up in the leas of the slopes. And there, ahead of them, was the scarp.  
Dex peered ahead, trying to catch a glimpse of the central peak of the crater. It should have been visible, but it was lost in the skeins of snowfall.  
The M30 pulled forward. Loose gravel crunched under its wheels and the wind moaned around it. The windscreen wipers continued shifting snow.  
Dex frowned. The snow looked off somehow. It looked ... slushy?  
Oh no.  
To the Finch, he said, 'What's the weather doing?'  
'It's...' She fell quiet for a moment. 'Oh, shit. Fuck's sake. Jesus Christ.'  
'What?' he asked.  
'Seems this side of the crater wall does have its own microclimate,' she said. 'And there's been a weather front piling up against it. Being warmed in the sun. And absorbing heat from the rocks, too.'  
'It's trying to rain, isn't it?'  
She nodded. 'Temperature has jumped to plus three Celsius. Air pressure's up to eighty-four millibars. And yes, it appears the snow is melting.'  
Three degrees Celsius. By Kalthis standards, this was a crazily hot, tropical summer's day. Since Palaven averaged nearly thirty degrees hotter, for Dex this was appallingly cold.  
'So I suppose by human standards this is nice and warm,' he said.  
The Finch stared. 'Fuck no!' She shook her head. 'Frankly, this is a good approximation to winters in London. I mean, with less air pollution. And less air. And bugger all oxygen.'  
‘So nothing like winters in London then, mammal,’ Krondesh said. Apparently the krogan was feeling like dispensing some of his usual tart observations.  
Outside it was definitely raining now and not snowing. Fat droplets of water splashed against the canopy. The rainfall added a new sound to their surroundings – the hiss and splatter of falling water. It was harder to see outside. The visibility had reduced. It appeared a proper storm was in the offing. Dex couldn't believe their spirits-damned luck.  
The M30 inched its way down the slope. Rivulets of water chattered past them, dirty with the sooty dust and sand that Kalthian rocks crumbled into. Occasional chunks of ice floated past, washed down from further up the crater wall. The wind picked up, surging and moaning around them.  
They reached the edge of the ice-lake.  
'This must be partly how the lake formed,' the Finch mused. 'A uniquely warm local microclimate. And a crater wall whose highest side stands directly against the prevailing wind. Perfect conditions for actual rainfall. Even then this must be pretty rare.'  
'Lucky us,' Krondesh muttered. ‘Right in the middle of this mouth-breathing moon’s only rainfall zone.’  
‘It would be easier if Kat had set up shop on that nice featureless flat icecap on the other side,’ Dex agreed. ‘But she was never going to make our lives easy, was she?’  
‘Up ahead,’ the Finch said. ‘That’s the scarp we need to get behind.’ She pointed at the shelf in the ice.  
‘I’m moving, mammal,’ Krondesh groused. The M30’s wheels ground as it rolled onwards.  
They pulled into the shadow of the scarp. Once it was out of the wind, the M30 started handling better. But water was cascading down over the ice, taking bits with it. There was also a stream forming, runoff from the mountain behind them. Water was splashing around the wheels.  
They drove along.  
'Water's getting a bit high,' Krondesh said.  
'Weather?' Dex asked the Finch.  
'Wow. Plus five degrees. And, umm, rain. Heavy rain.'  
'How are we for stability?' Dex asked the krogan.  
'This is okay, for now,' Krondesh said. 'But if the water gets much higher we might start losing traction.'  
'You mean - get washed away?'  
'Yes, army boy,' the krogan said, sounding tetchy.  
Washed away on fucking Kalthis? Dex wondered what he’d done to make the spirits this angry with him. He shook his head, feeling his mandibles twitch. No use maundering over it – time to make a decision.  
Dex made a judgement call. 'Okay everyone,' he said. 'Helmets on. We might have to bail from the M30 if this carries on.’  
‘Bail?’ Krondesh asked. ‘In the middle of a flood?’  
‘In that case, our best chance is to try and jump onto the ice over there,’ Dex said. ‘If we get washed away, the spirits only know where the vehicle will end up.’  
‘Shit,’ Krondesh said.  
Dex said, ‘Also, Finch? Could you pass us our guns? We'll need them if we have to get out.'  
'Sure,' she said.  
Dex settled the front section of his helmet over his face. Holding it there with one hand, he pushed the back half on, enclosing his fringe-plates and the back of his head. The two parts locked together, then with a shove and a twist he sealed them onto the neck ring. Then he was breathing the familiar rubber-and-metal scent of the suit's inside. A moment later, the Finch passed him his Mattock and his Widow.  
Dex tucked them awkwardly between his legs, where his knees could hold them in place.  
'If we have to bail,' the Finch's voice said over the comm, 'how are we going to get back to the Amarei?'  
'Then I assume we'll be borrowing Kat's shuttle,' Dex replied.  
A big wave of dirty run-off splashed against the M30's body. Dex felt the cabin rock under the impact. Outside the once-in-a-century storm showed no sign of letting up. Fat droplets of water were sluicing off of the canopy.  
The M30 pulled along as best it could. Dex wondered how Kat's base was coping with this. He allowed himself a moment of vicious amusement as he imagined cold water cascading down the tunnels. Still that was only a fantasy. If the base was air-tight, and it must be, then logic suggested it was also watertight.  
His amusement turned to a frown. Just what was Kat doing holing up on this awful moon?  
The M30 shuddered and twisted to one side. Dex actually saw a wash of grey water slosh over the bottom of the canopy. It wiped the smudges of soot left by the snow aside, leaving a tracery of dirt of its own. Krondesh tapped some keys. Juddering, the M30 turned back on course.  
'Dex,' Krondesh said.  
Dex blinked. The krogan had just used his name? And Krondesh's tone was different. Not sarcastic or bitter, but tense. The krogan was concentrating.  
'Yes?' he said.  
'We're pretty close to getting washed away,' the krogan said. 'The M30 weighs less than half what it should. Low fucking gravity. And we have fuck all traction on what's under the wheels, thanks to the water. We might as well be covered in oil.'  
Dex frowned. 'Are we ... floating?'  
'Not quite yet, but we're close to it.'  
'Okay,' Dex said. 'This isn't working. Change of plan. Krondesh, I’m spinning up the mass core. All the way.'  
Krondesh blinked. 'But...'  
'Then hit the jets,' Dex said. 'We might be able to jump ourselves up onto the ice.'  
Dex reached for his controls. Keys glowed under his talons. The whine of the mass effect core rose sharply.  
The krogan leaned forward. He hit several keys.  
There was a roar. Steam erupted around the M30 as the jets boiled the water. Dex's weight dropped away. The M30 jolted upwards. Outside the ice scarp dropped down. Water streamed off of the body of the rover. Dex caught a glimpse of the ice as the jets pushed them to the side -  
They landed with a thump.  
'Shit,' the Finch said.  
Next to them, runoff from the crater walls was streaming past. The water level was rising. It was looking less like a stream and more like a raging torrent. They had got out with only moments to spare.  
Dex sighed. 'We have a problem,' he said.  
'No shit,' Krondesh said.  
'The M30 is too big a target,' Dex said. 'If we drive this up to their front door, it will get seen. In fact, we've probably already been spotted. Those jets were hot, and you saw all that steam.'  
'Do you have an idea?' the Finch asked. 'I'm not sure I fancy walking across all this ice.'  
'We loop round,' Dex said, 'and approach from the opposite side of the central peak. We'll have to take part of the journey on foot. But if we can get onto rocky ground, that should be okay.'  
'That's going to take longer,' Krondesh said.  
'If we set off now we can do it before we run out of twilight,' Dex said. 'But it will be close.'  
Krondesh looked out at the scarp. Beside it there was now a fast-moving river of meltwater. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Driving over there isn't going to be safe. Wonder where all the water is going?'  
'Downhill,' the Finch said. 'The lowest part of the crater basin is between where we are and the peak. Presumably once that bit's flooded, it will start backing up.'  
Krondesh said, 'We're bringing a big M30 up close to the mountain. Won't that alert them to our presence?'  
For a moment Dex had an urge to tell the krogan to just shut up and follow orders. Then he reminded himself that simply wouldn't work. The other two weren't turian trainees - it just wasn't appropriate or sensible to try and treat them as if they were.  
He said, 'We'll be taking one very big heat source into the shadow of the mountain. Three smaller, cooler heat sources will get out. Amongst the snow, rain and rocks, their sensors will be less likely to spot us.'  
To his great relief, the Finch was nodding. 'He's right,' she said. 'It seems their main defence is the GARDIAN system. Its sensor suite will be aimed at spacecraft. So smaller heat signatures are the way forward.'  
The krogan subsided. 'All right, fine. Have it your way.'  
A tense but refreshingly-uneventful drive followed.  
The ice was covered in a slush of puddles and half-melted snow. Here and there wind-sculpted ice-dunes emerged from the surface. The M30's windscreen wipers had to work harder than ever to keep the canopy clear.  
After a while the rainfall slackened off and the cloud began to thin. More murky Urdaklight leaked through, gleaming ruddily off of the ice and staining the puddles with the shade of blood. The Finch reported that the temperature was falling. The storm, she reckoned, was over. Rain started to give way to snow once more.  
The rain's cover lasted just until they reached the steep, exposed rock slope of the central peak. By then the precipitation had faded into a drizzle of snow. Temperatures were back below freezing, and with Sahrabarik in eclipse, they were falling fast. Dex pulled the M30 up onto the bottom of the slope. The peak loomed above them, an angular and jagged shape. Gravel and ice grains crunched under the tires as the M30 rolled to a halt.  
'Right,' Dex said, 'check your seals, rebreathers and power supplies. And let's do a final check on our guns.'  
The Finch nodded. Krondesh grumbled, but he co-operated.  
Once everyone was satisfied that they were adequately prepared, Dex keyed the M30 to power down. There was no point leaving a passive heatsource to give away their presence. Then it was a matter of climbing out, onto the surface of Kalthis.  
As the loose surface growled under Dex's boots, the clouds were breaking up overhead. Streamers of sky were growing and merging. The last of the snow faded away.  
Dex actually heard Krondesh as the krogan landed next to him, loose stones shush-shushing under his boots. 'Well,' Krondesh said, 'I'm glad we had all that practise at moving under this gravity. Really didn't land as heavily as I expected. Would've bent my legs too much. And fallen over.'  
'Yeah,' the Finch said, appearing beside them. 'I think we've all had enough of you falling over for one lifetime.'  
'So,' Krondesh asked, his bulbous helmet pointing in Dex's direction, 'what now?'  
Dex pointed to the left of the peak. 'We go that way,' he said. 'According to the mapping I've seen, there were some things that could be pumpworks for the old mine over there. If there's a back door, it will be near there.'  
'Sounds workable,' the Finch said. Something static crackled under her voice.  
Dex continued, 'Krondesh, I want you on point. Finch, you take the flank. I'll try and cover you both with this.' He hefted the Black Widow.  
The Finch nodded. 'Okay.' Her omnitool flickered momentarily, then orange tech armour fields blinked into life over her suit.  
Krondesh performed a mnemonic gesture and a bluish-violet biotic corona crawled over his Berserker suit. It complemented the green lights quite nicely, Dex noted in an irrelevant observation. Unlike their last trip outside of Omega, there was some air here for his biotics to ionise.  
'Let's get moving,' Dex said. 'We've only got another fifteen minutes of the eclipse left.' Privately he wasn't sure if they had enough time, but he didn't share his doubts.  
They started moving.  
Fortunately, the central peak was fairly modest in size, and its surface was relatively smooth. Picking their way across the slope proved easier than Dex had feared. They made good time. When they crested the side of the peak, they still had several minutes of Urdaklight left.  
On the opposite side of the peak, evidence of industry became apparent. Fragments of abandoned machinery lay here and there, some half buried by ice and gravel, other bits exposed where they lay. In the absence of oxygen and the presence of very little water, there wasn't much rust. Dex walked past a mining rover that almost looked like it could have been left there yesterday, but for the extremely-antiquated make of the machine. However, when he pushed a gauntleted hand against one of its sides, the age-weakened metal cracked and a chunk fell off. Dex flinched. Fortunately it landed with only a quiet thud.  
He froze, fearing discovery. The only response was the quiet sighing of the wind around them.  
'Watch what you're doing, army boy,' Krondesh growled.  
Dex turned his attention back to hand. Down below was a scene he recognised from the orbital images. There was Kat's ship. Over there was the dead shuttle left behind by the old mining companies. Up close it was obviously ruinous. Dead metal spars stuck out from its broken sides and an airlock door lay uselessly on the ground, several metres from the main body.  
Down below, at the base of the peak, there emerged a cluster of antennae and comms dishes. With them was what looked like an industrial heat-exchange unit, a blocky shape ensconced in a nest of vents and pipework. Presumably that was part of the mine's life support system, Dex supposed. Near to it were the carcasses of the above-ground buildings once associated with the mineworks. The main entrance would be somewhere in there. Since that was guaranteed to be monitored, Dex noted to himself to go nowhere near it. In the middle distance he could see the squat dark shapes of several GARDIAN ground-turrets. Luckily all of them were pointed outward.  
Something was making a whistling and splashing noise.  
'Look,' the Finch said. 'Over there!' She pointed.  
To their left, a jet of actual water arced up into the air. The improbable fountain splashed down onto the icefield, some distance out from the rock. The water had formed a small lake around it, a lake whose edges were already freezing. The jet of water steamed in the cold air.  
'There's a pipe at the bottom of it,' Krondesh said.  
There was indeed. Dex saw the black, tubular mouth protruded from the ground. 'Excellent,' he said, feeling a moment of triumph. 'We've found the drainage system for the mines. And it's active, so someone's clearly home.'  
'Let's go down and have a look,' Krondesh said.  
It took a few minutes of careful searching, but they found a maintenance airlock close to the fountain. It was recessed into a small tunnel that had been cut into the peak. The metal was old and dirty with age, but the holographics still glimmered with life.  
A quick investigation revealed that the lock was closed and alarmed.  
'Can you get it open?' Dex asked the Finch.  
She had her omnitool out and was peering at the readouts. 'Yes,' she said. 'And I can do it without triggering the alarm. This is a fairly old system. It may take a few minutes, though.'  
'Okay,' Dex said. 'Do it as fast as you can.'  
The Finch got to work. After a tense period of her tapping away on her omnitool, the light on the holographic lock shifted to green. With a rumble of badly-oiled motors, the outer door slid open.  
They moved into the chamber of the airlock. The outer door closed, and the pressurisation cycle ran through. Dex's suit sensors informed him that the air outside was now at fifteen degrees centigrade, and breathable. The ice and snow on his boots was steaming in the warmer air, melting away before his eyes.  
With a quiet click, the inner airlock door opened. A tunnel was revealed beyond it. It was light by a line of dim strip lights along the roof and the walls were festooned with pipework.  
'We're in,' the Finch said.


	21. The Base

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A turian, a krogan and a human make their way into the bowels of Kalthis. Going underground on the moon doesn’t result in much improvement, although at least it’s not raining anymore.
> 
> Alien technology is encountered. A conversation is overheard. Implications are discussed, and the general consensus is that they’re not good. Further information is required…

The tunnel sloped gently downwards. It was square in profile, with rough-cut walls of exposed rock. Lights, power cables, air ducts and other miscellaneous technology had been bolted to the walls. Most of the fittings were ancient and many items were not in working order. At one point Dex had to step carefully over a heap of dead cable, lying tangled up in the middle of the floor.  
The air in the tunnel was clammy, cool and musty. Around them they could hear the sounds of condensed water dripping from the ceiling, plip-plip-plipping into puddles, and the groaning of pipework. Ventilation fans filled the air with a continual but unsteady rattle. As they passed, the Finch looked at one of the ventilator grates and shook her head. The grate was shaking with each wheezing exhalation of air.  
'This place isn't too well maintained,' she said.  
'No shit,' Krondesh agreed.  
Dex had reluctantly folded up his Widow and stored on its slot on his back. In this confined space, it would be of limited use. Instead he had his Mattock gripped in both hands.  
'We need to keep moving,' he said. 'My guess is, Kat will be somewhere near the centre of the complex.'  
It was just a guess. There was very little information available about the insides of the mine complex.  
The Finch spoke. She sounded dubious. 'Just how big is this place?' she said. 'That heat signature on the maps you showed us - I thought it looked rather big.'  
Dex sighed. 'There's no way to be sure. Do us a favour - do a scan for open networks. If there's anything we can hack to get some data, that would be useful.'  
The Finch folded up her Carnifex and put it back on her hip-slot. She tapped at her omnitool. 'There are some,' she said. 'But this is all low-level stuff. Pipework management systems, that kind of thing. They can't tell us anything useful.'  
'Damn,' Dex said.  
'There is one more,' the Finch said. She sounded uncertain.  
'One more?'  
'It's a strong signal,' she said. 'They must have repeaters set up for it, given that we're underground. But I don't recognise any of these protocols.'  
'What do you mean?' Krondesh asked.  
'I mean my omnitool can't make any sense of it. It can see that there is a signal. It can say how strong that signal is.' She pointed down the corridor, ahead of them. 'And it can say there's almost certainly a repeater somewhere on the wall down there. But it can't interpret what the signal is. Or what it does. Or how you connect to it.'  
'That's bizarre,' Dex said. Next to him, some water dripped off of a wet patch on the dull rock above. The condensation splashed into a puddle on the floor.  
'I don't understand,' Krondesh said. 'Surely it's all just bytes and bits?'  
Dex had to remind himself that the krogan did not have a technical background. Thinking quickly, he said, 'Suppose you met someone who spoke a language you don't. You'd recognise the sound of speech. You'd spot the cues when they want you to reply to them. But without a dictionary, you wouldn't be able to make that reply. Or to interpret what exactly they said. If I'm understanding our human colleague here, I think that's the situation she's in.'  
Krondesh nodded slowly. He was clutching his Claymore. The omniblade glimmered with a menacing light. 'Okay. That makes some sense.'  
The Finch said, 'I'd really like a look at this repeater, if we can spare a minute. This is all a bit too strange.'  
Dex shrugged. 'Okay,' he said. 'I don't see why not.'  
The signal repeater proved easy to spot.  
'Well,' the Finch said, 'this must be it.'  
It was mounted two thirds of the way up the wall. It was a squat oblong shape with a rounded end and a stubby, cross-shaped antenna flat against the end. It was made of a deep black-purple metal and had little lights recessed into one side of it.  
'What the fuck is that?' Krondesh asked.  
The Finch ran her omnitool over it, scanning. 'I really have no idea.'  
Something about her manner caught Dex's attention. She didn't sound insincere - not that he was certain he could reliably spot alien insincerity. But she didn't sound entirely baffled either.  
'You've seen something similar,' he guessed.  
Her head turned his way. He saw his reflection in the visor of her helmet. She looked back at the repeater. She said. 'It ... no, that can't be right.'  
'What?'  
She sighed. 'You remember I said I worked on Noveria once?'  
'The place where your colleagues started disappearing,' Dex said.  
'Yeah. But before that - after the Battle of the Citadel, we got sent several crates of geth tech. Or that's what they said the items were.'  
'You sound like you're not sure about that,' Dex said.  
She nodded. 'What my lab got - the tech was all badly damaged. Burnt, twisted, crumpled, that sort of thing. None of it worked anymore. But it didn't look like other geth items. If it was geth it was non-standard. I remember looking at one chunk under a microscope. There was circuitry all the way down. It was incredibly dense with electronics. And there were chunks of what I think was some sort of memory diamond embedded in it.'  
'Memory diamond? What's that?'  
'A hypothetical information storage medium,' she said. 'You use the carbon atoms as bits, doping it with different isotopes. The problem with it is we have no way of doing information I/O on it.'  
' "I/O" ?'  
'Input-output,' she said. 'Basically you could possibly build a memory diamond, but afterwards you've got no way to write information to it, and no way to read from it.'  
'And the geth disagreed?' Krondesh asked.  
'The diamonds were rigged up with what looked like miniaturised mass effect generators,' she said. 'We thought they were using nano-scale mass fields to directly-manipulate the crystal lattice itself. Set up tailored piezoelectrical discharges. Maybe even force the lattice to be electrically-conductive under some field geometries.'  
'That would require breathtakingly fine control of the mass fields,' Dex said.  
'Yeah,' she said. 'If we could have reverse-engineered how the tech worked, it would've been a gold mine. But the samples we had were just too damaged. Also I think the tech was too advanced, as well. It was like we were trying to fix an M30 using stone tools.'  
'It's a nice anecdote,' Krondesh said, 'but what's the relevance?'  
The Finch pointed at the repeater. 'This is totally unscientific,' she said. 'But that guy on the wall there? It looks a lot like some of the things we had to work with. Except intact.'  
Dex frowned. 'Wait - you're suggesting Kat is working with the geth?'  
The Finch shook her head. 'No. Or at least, I don't think so. Or I'm not sure.'  
'You really don't sound sure.'  
She spread her arms. 'We were told that the tech we were given was geth - but I'm wondering now if it wasn't.'  
'Who could it be, then?'  
'Well we know Kat's worked with the Collectors,' the Finch said. 'And they're known for highly-advanced machinery. What if the junk we were given was actually Collector stuff?'  
Dex shrugged. 'So what if it was?'  
The Finch had no answer to that, but she seemed distracted by the machine on the wall.  
'Well,' Krondesh said, 'nothing we can do about this now. We'd better move on.'  
They moved.  
The tunnel carried on downwards for some distance more. The temperature rose further. A stream of water runoff now occupied the middle of the floor, tinkling and trickling downwards. On the one hand its noise covered their advance. On the other hand, Dex worried that they might be walking into a flood.  
His fears were soothed when the tunnel levelled out. It branched into several side-corridors. They appeared to be maintenance tunnels. One of the tunnels turned out to be blocked off by a rockfall a few metres down. The second one was unlit and all its pipework was silent. The Finch reported no detectable network connections down there. It seemed that one led onto either nothing, or onto an abandoned section of the complex.  
The third tunnel was next. They proceeded down this one.  
As they walked, the tunnel grew drier. The air temperature rose and the musty scent faded. Dex noticed a damp course, carved into the floor along one side of the tunnel. The small culvert was carrying away what condensation there was.  
The dripping of condensed water was replaced by mechanical sounds, pipes creaking and ticking and the faint buzz of electrical circuits. The stuff on the walls seemed to be in much better repair than it had been above. This was an area that clearly had at least semi-regular visitors.  
As they walked down the tunnel, one side opened out. There was a big rectangular cut-out, running from floor to ceiling, like someone had tried to carve a doorway. However, it was blocked off. The rock was replaced by a wall of overlapping plastic slats. Several had holes in them. Some of these holes had cables and pipes threaded through. There was another set, which looked more recently cut. These had nothing in them. Light spilled in through them.  
There were also muffled voices, talking.  
Gesturing everyone else to be silent, Dex dropped down to one knee to peer through one of the holes.  
The brighter light made him squint for a moment. Then as his eyes adjusted, he took in the scene beyond.  
The little hole looked out onto a wider open area. Above was a ceiling of smooth-planed Kalthean rock. The floor was covered in plastic prefabricated tiles. The area was lit by lamps mounted two thirds of the way up the walls. The room contained several benches. A couple of batarians were sat at the tables, eating.  
Speaking quietly, Dex said, 'Looks like it's their mess hall out there.' Against the back wall he saw the familiar blocky shapes of several food preparation units There was a sound from the far side of the room. A door slid open.  
In walked Kat.  
Dex's breath caught in his throat. It was definitely her. As before, she was wearing the familiar old jumpsuit and in one hand, she had her old gun. With her was a guard of weird-looking aliens. They had spindly, etiolated bodies and heads with long, tapered tails hanging behind them. Multiple eyes stared out from their mouthless faces. They looked insectile. They were carrying guns of unfamiliar designs. To Dex's well-trained eye, they looked a bit like some sort of assault rifle, but it was hard to be sure. The guns seemed to be made out of the same sort of chitinous material as the aliens' skin.  
'Shit,' Dex breathed. 'She really is working with the Collectors.'  
Kat walked over to one of the batarians. She rapped her knuckles on the table next to him.  
The man jumped, like he'd been startled.  
'Narack,' she said. 'Our allies tell me we've had a visitor.'  
The batarian - Narack? - looked up. He took in Kat and her attendants, and started looking worried. 'I - Boss, what visitor?'  
'Your much-vaunted GARDIAN guns,' Kat said. 'Apparently they didn't see it.'  
'Uh - you mean a ship?'  
'No, I mean flying krogan with pink fluffy wings!' Kat waved a hand at the air, with an expression of dramatic exasperation on her face. 'Of course I mean a ship, idiot! Our benefactors tell me it put itself into orbit around Kalthis about a day ago. And thirteen hours ago, apparently it took a low swoop at the surface.'  
Thirteen hours? Dex frowned. They'd been in the tunnels longer than he'd thought.  
'Uh, a swoop?' The batarian was looking very concerned now.  
'You have no idea, do you?' Kat said. 'Why the fuck am I paying you idiot mercs?' She looked at one of the Collectors, then back. 'Frankly Narack, I'm not so sure you serve any purpose.'  
Narack stiffened. The expression on his face shifted to unmistakeable fear. Something was going on here, something more than just a confrontation between Kat and her underlings. Dex leaned forward.  
He became aware that the krogan had squatted down next to him. Krondesh was peering through another hole. The wedge-shaped helmet turned his way. Dex saw his own reflection gleaming on Krondesh's eyelenses. In a low voice, the krogan said, 'Army boy, do you reckon you could snipe her through that hole?'  
Instinctively, Dex reached for his Widow. He rested a hand on the butt of the folded-up gun. He looked at the hole.  
Kat wasn't even looking his way. She'd never know what hit her. It would be the perfect shot - and it would end any chance of bringing her in alive. In a real sense, it would just be murder. He could do it - as a trained sniper, he could take this shot. But that didn't answer the familiar question - should he take the shot?  
There was also another problem.  
'Too small,' he said quietly.  
'Really?'  
'I can get the gun into the hole,' he said, whispering, 'but it would block my sight. So I wouldn't be able to aim. If I miss the first shot ...' He shrugged. 'Then they're warned, and I won't get a second one.'  
'Shit.' Krondesh sounded depressed. 'It was never going to be that easy, was it?'  
Dex didn't feel so depressed. Taking the shot wasn't a plausible possibility, but something in him was happy not to do it. Just this once, it gave him a justifiable reason to dodge the moral dilemma.  
Kat was talking again.  
'Honestly,' she was saying, 'perhaps I should just hand you over. Our benefactors have been generous.' She looked at the Collector next to her, and gave the bug-creature a smile. Her face contorted itself into a glassy-eyed rictus grin. It was an expression devoid of thought, a sort of blind and loving reverence. She reached out and stroked the side of the alien's face.  
Dex shuddered.  
'Asari really do have no standards,' Krondesh muttered. ‘Wonder how long she’s been dating the bug?’  
The Finch made a quiet gagging noise. Dex gestured for silence again.  
Kat looked back to the batarian. A glimmering of awareness flickered back into her eyes. 'And the study room always needs more samples, doesn’t it?'  
Study room? Samples? Dex felt uneasy. He wasn't sure what that meant, exactly, but it sounded unpleasant.  
The batarian was shaking his head. 'Boss,' he said, 'you know the sensors don't work so well in this sort of weather. We can't stop the moon throwing the odd tantrum. And with that giant ship of theirs coming and going - that can't be doing the weather any favours!' He glanced at the Collector. He continued, 'If you want us to look at it, forward us the data.'  
Something very strange happened. Kat looked at the Collector. The expression on her face looked like she was asking permission.  
Dex leaned forward. What the hell was this? Since when did Kat ever ask anyone's permission for anything? She just stood there, waiting politely, until the silent bug-thing nodded once.  
'What the fuck?' Krondesh murmured. Apparently the krogan had noticed the out-of-character behaviour too.  
Kat turned back to the batarian. 'Okay, Narack,' she said. Her omnitool bloomed into life. 'Here it is.'  
Dex pulled his up and tried to snoop on the transmission. Unfortunately, it went through too fast for him to catch.  
The batarian - Narack - looked down at his omnitool. 'Okay,' he said. 'Thank you. We'll see what's there.'  
Kat glowered. 'If you do decide to do anything,' she said, 'I'll be in the main office.' She turned sharply on her heels and stalked off. The Collectors followed her. They walked out of the narrow field of view.  
A moment later Dex heard another door hiss shut.  
Krondesh began to stand up. Dex gestured him not to. The turian leaned forward. Narack was shaking his head. Dex could only see the batarian's back but his posture suggested annoyance.  
Narack spoke to the other batarian.  
'I don't like this,' he said. 'And I note we haven't seen Kherynt for a while.'  
Dex blinked. Interesting.  
The other batarian turned his head toward the direction Kat had gone in, then leaned forward, speaking quietly. Dex had to listen in to catch what he said. 'Narack, I'm going to be honest. I don't think we'll be seeing Kherynt again.'  
Narack shuddered. 'Yeah. I think you might be right. This is really fucked up. Do you think-'  
'The room? Yeah. That'd be my guess. Can't get in there, though. Not with three of those buggy bastards on the door.'  
Buggy bastards? Dex assumed that must be code for Collectors.  
'The glowing one hasn't shown up for a while,' Narack said, sounding half-hopeful.  
'That was Karrean's special friend,' the other batarian said. 'Can't say I'm sorry to see the back of it.'  
'I don't know that we have,' Narack said. 'I saw it when it ... arrived ... one time. It's creepy as shit. It takes one of those bug-bodies and - well, it's like something out of a horror vid. It's like a possession. They spasm and then they light up. A sort of biotic corona, I think - so strong you actually feel it! And then they start talking.'  
'None of the others do, do they?'  
Narack shook his head. 'I don't think they can,' he said. 'They just make that chittering.'  
'They don't even talk when they're in that room,' the other batarian said. 'Not even when they're - you know.'  
'Yeah. And I wish I didn't know.'  
'I think we need to get out of here,' the other batarian said.  
Narack nodded. 'Yeah. You're right. That's why I asked for that data.'  
'Why?'  
'If there's another ship here...'  
'Oh.' The other batarian's voice suddenly sounded hopeful.  
'And trying to be positive,' Narack said, 'given that there's only two of us left - they won't need much extra room, will they?'  
Dex frowned. Two of them left? Hadn't Kat left Omega with a much larger entourage?  
The other batarian stood up. 'I need to go on shift,' he said.  
'Not the room, I hope?'  
'No, the central office. Thank the Pillars.'  
Narack nodded. 'Okay. I'm going to have a look at this data. Meet me in my room in the accommodation block later. Let's see if we can figure out a way out of this nightmare.'  
Narack stood. Both of them walked away from the table, moving in separate directions. After a time the sounds of their footsteps faded.  
Dex crouched there in the half-light behind the slats, silent for a time. He shifted his weight from one foot to another. Finally, he said, 'Well, that was an interesting conversation.'  
'I couldn't hear much of it,' the Finch said.  
Krondesh said, 'Basically it seems Kat's pissed off her staff. I mean, really pissed them off.'  
Dex shook his head. 'More than that,' he said. 'From the sounds of it I think she's done something bad.'  
'The room,' Krondesh said. 'The one they talked about.'  
Dex nodded. 'Don't know about you but I got a bit of a "mad abattoir" vibe from that bit.'  
'And the Collectors are here,' Krondesh said.  
'I'm having a thought,' the Finch said.  
'I suspect I'm having the same one,' Dex said, 'but let's hear it.'  
'We've been assuming all along,' the Finch said, 'that all this was Kat's operation. But if the Collectors were just customers, why are they still here?'  
'Shit,' Krondesh said. 'If you were a buyer, you'd have bailed from a deal like this.'  
'Karrean gone, Kat an exile,' the Finch said. 'Yeah. The bugs should have vanished. And yet they seem to be here too. Almost as a sort of honour guard for Kat, no less.'  
Dex thought of that expression on Kat's face. It troubled him. 'I think we've stumbled on something that's fucked up,' he said. 'Krondesh - when you were listening in - did Kat seem, you know, out of character?'  
Krondesh shrugged, shoulder plates rattling. 'You know her better than I do. Though she did seem rather friendly with the bugs. But I just thought that was asari being asari.'  
Dex shook his head. 'No. That wasn't like Kat. I've never seen her show a hint of affection for anything other than money. Believe me, what was going on in there was weird. And the look on her face...'  
He shuddered.  
The Finch leaned forward. Dex saw his reflection in her visor, distorted and smeared by the curved plastic. 'This might be way off the mark,' the Finch said, 'but did she have a sort of uncritical reverence in her eyes?'  
'I thought you weren't watching.'  
'I wasn't. I'm nowhere near any of the eye-holes.' The Finch waved a hand at the slats. 'But this sounds more familiar than I'd like.'  
'Familiar? How so?'  
She took a breath. 'Back on Noveria, at the AI project. My team only got handed dead geth tech. But the clean room team, in the secure lab down the corridor - rumour had it they got some stuff that was more intact. Some bits even powered up, off of batteries or something. Our teams were partitioned. We weren't allowed to go in there, and we weren't supposed to talk to them.'  
'I'm guessing you did, though,' Krondesh said. 'I mean, you're human. And you regard rules as challenges to be circumvented, right?'  
'Well,' the Finch said, 'not really. But - yeah. We talked sometimes. Simmons used to make me coffee.'  
' "Simmons?" '  
'Dr. Archibald Simmons,' she said. 'He was one of the materials science specialists who were cleared for the secure lab. We had some interests in common. Before everything went off the rails there, I was thinking about asking him out.'  
Krondesh sounded puzzled. 'You'd go outside? On Noveria? I heard it was fucking freezing.'  
The Finch sighed. 'Damn. Obviously a cultural referent didn't quite go across there. What I meant was, I was eyeing him up as a possible romantic partner. "Asking someone out" is a colloquial expression that means - oh, screw this, why do I even bother?'  
She sounded frustrated.  
Krondesh shook his head. 'No, mammal, I think I understand now. You wanted in on his pants.'  
'Well, that too,' she said.  
'I'm getting a sense of the past tense here,' Dex said. 'Did he turn up dead too?'  
'Yes,' she said. She swallowed, then shook her head. 'But that was later. They said he went outside at night and froze to death. Stupidest excuse I've ever heard. Incidentally, that was when I knew it was time to bug out.'  
'They weren't even bothering to lie plausibly,' Krondesh said.  
'It was also the same day that those five people vanished off of my team,' she said. 'Definitely check out time. But thing was, we weren't an item long before that happened. Other things got there first.'  
'I'm sensing a story here,' Krondesh said.  
'After he'd been working in the secure lab for a few weeks,' she said, 'Archie got a bit work-happy. He started doing overtime, constantly. Staying in there all the time. Even having his meals taken in there. After a while, he started sleeping under his desk. I heard a rumour he even started doing his bathroom trips in there.'  
'What?' Krondesh sounded incredulous.  
'Well, the standing-up trips, anyway. I overhead the lab cleaners talking about it. Including the memorable phrase "the jug of yellow shame". I'll leave it to your imagination what that might entail.'  
'That is gross,' Dex said. He could take a few guesses at the meaning and none of them were good.  
'Yes,' she said. 'And that's the point. The Archie I met at the start would never have done anything like that. While he was working on those live pieces, in the secure lab, he got obsessed with them. When we did see him, they were all he would talk about. And when he did, he developed this sort of glassy-eyed, slack-jawed thing. It was creepy.' She shook her head. 'We began speculating that there was something odd about geth tech.'  
'You said that node in the corridor looked like their hardware,' Krondesh said.  
She nodded. 'Yes. And that description of Kat - well, it reminded me of what happened to my former colleagues.'  
'But you said that was geth hardware,' Dex said.  
'Yes, and I also said I've been developing some doubts about that,' the Finch said. 'We were told a lot of lies on that project. They said it was stuff salvaged from the wreck of that geth dreadnought at the Citadel back in '83. I think that was crap. I'm starting to think it was Collector tech all along. And it seems there's something decidedly unhealthy about Collector tech. It seems to fuck people up.'  
‘You think that’s what’s happened to Kat?’ Dex asked.  
‘If Collector tech alone can screw you up, what would cuddling up to actual fucking Collectors do?’  
Dex shivered, feeling his mandibles move. That was not a nice thought.  
Krondesh said, 'We were exposed to that thing on the wall back there. Are we in any danger, do you think?'  
The Finch sighed. 'Hard to say. It took Archie a few weeks of exposure before he got really, really strange. Whatever it is, or however it works, there does seem to be a minimum threshold.'  
'Most of the technology here is ordinary galactic stuff,' Dex said. 'The only bug stuff we've really seen was that node - and the Collectors themselves.'  
The Finch nodded. 'And we were only near the node for a few minutes. So I think we'll probably be all right. But if you start getting an urge to take one of those nodes and keep it under your pillow, or something?' She shrugged. 'I'd take that as a bad sign.'  
Overhead, a pipe running along the ceiling groaned as a bubble of something worked its way through.  
'This situation,' Dex said, 'feels like it's getting out of hand.'  
'What about the batarian?' Krondesh asked.  
'I think we need to go and talk to him,' Dex said. 'We're missing a lot of context here.'


	22. Narack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team acquire a new ally; Narack the batarian. It seems not everyone nominally on her side are happy with Kat's behaviour...

Narack had said he would be in the accommodation block. Dex had no idea where that would be. However, he assumed it would have to be somewhere with showers and toilets. So, the three followed the densest clutch of water pipes back through the maze of service corridors. Sure enough, the pipes eventually terminated in a wall opposite a small hatch. Halfway up the hatch, there was a grill. Looking out through it, Dex saw a brightly-lit corridor. On one wall, it said ACCOMODATION.  
'This is our place,' Dex said.  
Up on the wall was the small glass hemisphere that marked an observation camera. Dex gestured the Finch over and pointed it out to her. 'Do you think you could do something about that?' he asked.  
Her omnitool blinked into life. 'Let me have a look,' she said.  
She tapped away at some keys, peering closely at the display. 'Ah,' she said. 'Like I thought. It's a wireless connection. One moment.'  
She tapped some more keys.  
'There,' she said. 'I've looped the last five seconds of the feed.'  
'Five seconds showing an empty corridor,' Dex said.  
She nodded. 'They'll notice something eventually at this central office,' she said, 'but it'll do for now. We can get out there without being seen.'  
Dex nodded. 'Good work,' he said. 'Let's get this hatch open.'  
The hatch hadn't been used in a long time. It took a lot of pushing before it groaned open. Krondesh offered to help but Dex waved him back. The last thing they needed was the krogan spamming shockwaves or whatever he would have done.  
The three spilled out into the corridor, blinking in the brighter light. Its walls were lined with insulated panelling and were wider. It was painted in white, save for signposts and markers. The floor consisted of prefabricated decking. It much less claustrophobic than the maintenance corridors.  
In front of them was the door to the Accommodation block.  
Dex walked up to it and knocked. The sound echoed in the corridor.  
Krondesh said, 'What the fuck are you doing, bird? Do you want him to know we're coming?'  
'Yes,' Dex said.  
Krondesh paused. 'You do?'  
'Think about it,' Dex said. 'Three heavily-armed aliens burst into your room without warning. What reaction is that going to get?'  
'Oh.'  
'Exactly. Especially since we're here to talk.'  
From behind the door, a voice said, 'Who's here to talk?'  
Dex took a gamble. 'We're not Collectors and we don't work with Kat.'  
There was a pause. 'There's a security camera in the corridor.'  
'We've hacked it.'  
'I'm opening the door. Please don't shoot me.'  
'As long as you don't shoot us.'  
'Or,' the voice added, 'if you do shoot me, do it properly. I don't want them dragging me off in agony to that room.'  
There was a quiet growl as the door mechanism engaged. It slid open, revealing a Spartan bunk room beyond. At the back was a small toilet and shower enclosure. Bunk beds stuck out like fingers from the side walls. Dex counted eight bunks in total. Several of them appeared completely undisturbed.  
In front of him was Narack.  
Dex got his first good look at the batarian. The alien stood a couple of inches shorter than Dex. He had the four characteristic dark eyes that all batarians had. His face and neck-wattles were greenish in colour. There was a long scar running along one side of his head. The alien was dressed in heavy armour, with the helmet under one arm. He had various ugly-looking sets of sharp metal spikes strapped to his suit, rather like Karrean had favoured. In his free hand he was holding a submachine gun. It took Dex a moment to place it before he realised with surprise that it was that newish model favoured by the Blood Pack.  
Another detail that caught Dex's eye was that Narack was wearing Blue Suns colours on his gear.  
'Well,' the batarian said, 'a delegation. What a surprise.' His tone was one of world-weary sarcasm. Dex was no expert on batarian expressions, but Narack seemed tired.  
The batarian took in their guns and equipment. 'A well-armed delegation,' he added.  
'We're here to talk,' Dex repeated.  
'You'd better come in, then.' Narack stepped to one side, waving them through the door.  
A few moments later and they were all inside the accommodation chamber, with the door shut behind them. It slid shut with a grumble of badly-oiled motors.  
Inside the door, Narack looked them up and down. He didn’t speak.  
'For someone confronted with aliens with guns,' Dex said to Narack, 'you seem rather calm.'  
The batarian considered the question. 'More that I'm past caring by now,' he said. 'A lot of fucked up shit's been going on here.'  
'We thought there were eight of you,' Krondesh put in.  
'There were eight of us,' Narack said. 'You might notice the past tense in there.'  
The Finch said, 'You all use each other for target practise or something?'  
Dex blinked. For her, that was quite the sharp remark. Her tone had been one of asperity, and the way she was holding her body gave out a sense of hostility. Belatedly, he remembered that humans and batarians weren't known to get on. He'd been focusing so much on working around his own enculturated turian-krogan issues that it hadn't even occurred to him that other species had their own petty dislikes.  
Narack looked at her. 'At least we'd hit each other,' he said. 'Whereas humans would put holes in all the scenery, then try to blame someone else.'  
The Finch twitched. Dex could just pick out her eyes behind her visor; they had narrowed. The turian had a feeling this was the human version of a glare.  
Of all people, it was Krondesh who intervened. Before the scene could escalate, the krogan said, 'So what did happen? We saw two of you in the mess hall.'  
'You saw -? Oh. You were behind the slats, weren't you?'  
'You ... know about that?'  
'Krogan, we drilled the holes ourselves.'  
'Oh,' Dex said. 'I did feel that those holes were a little bit convenient.'  
'This was yesterday,' Narack said. 'Before Kherynt ... well, yeah. While we still had Kherynt. He was the one with pilot training. The plan was to make a break for Kat's shuttle this morning. If we could just get off of Kalthis we'd have been all right.'  
'Would you?' Dex asked. 'Omega's a long way away. The shuttle would have to be rendezvous with a bigger ship. No way could it get all the way there on its own.'  
Narack pointed with his SMG at the elliptical symbol on his chestplate. 'Sometimes being part of a big organisation is useful. Particularly when you're a few steps up the ladder instead of stood on the ground.'  
'Merc groups aren't well-known for loyalty,' Krondesh said. 'And cross-system space travel is expensive.'  
'Yes,' Narack said, 'but so are bungled contracts. And this is the mother of all screw-ups. Believe me, management want to know what the fuck is going on here. And I have one hell of a story for them.'  
'Management ... ?' Dex blinked, feeling his mandibles move inside his helmet.  
'Allow me to introduce myself again,' the batarian said. 'Senior Analyst Narack Sarrel. I'm a specialist in business risk mitigation.'  
Dex took in the spikes, the Punisher, the scars and the armour. 'Risk ... mitigation? Senior analyst?'  
'I think we're missing some context here,' Krondesh said. 'Because that sounds like a back office job.'  
Narack nodded. 'Most of the time it is a back office job,' he said. 'Risk management is a big problem for merc groups. If too many operators get shot and too many jobs go bad, we don't make any money. In the Suns, we try to be organised about it. We do lots of analysis to try and weed out the problem contracts in advance. Ideally we don't sign up to them in the first place, or if we find one that's going bad, we pull out ASAP.'  
'Then ... what's with the gun?' the Finch asked. 'Or did you just get bored and feel like killing a load of people?'  
'Wow, you've really found yourself a prize specimen over there,' Narack told Dex. 'Talk about cynical humans.'  
'Still,' Krondesh said, 'she has a point. I'm guessing you're here to snoop on Kat. But why would she knowingly hire a risk analyst?'  
Narack shrugged, shoulder plates rattling. 'As far as she's concerned, I'm Section Leader Narack. If we have to check up on a client, we don't tell them we're sending someone to dig the dirt on them!'  
Dex was still feeling a bit confused. 'So you ... pose as a merc?'  
Narack sighed. 'You don't get this at all, do you, bird? I am a merc.' He turned the Punisher over in his hands. 'Believe me, I know how to use this. And yes, it's shed blood. Just because I have an office job, it doesn't mean I won't get my hands dirty if I need to.'  
'So the Blue Suns are taking Kat's money again,' Krondesh said. 'How come? I understand she fired you before.'  
‘They were sampling the wares,’ Dex said. ‘Or at least, that’s what Kat told me. That was why she dismissed them in the first place. Before I was hired.’  
Narack shook his head. ‘Complete rubbish, bird. Our troops were clean.’  
‘Convenient for you,’ Dex said. ‘And mercs are hardly known for honesty.’  
‘People might lie,’ Narack said, ‘but blood tests don’t. After Kat fired us the first time, I had to go over the unit we’d assigned there. They weren’t on drugs. Whatever else they were doing, they weren’t dipping into Kat’s wares.’  
‘This must have been about when she first started getting involved with Karrean,’ Krondesh said. ‘The botched assassination attempt, with the HMWSG.’  
Dex nodded slowly. ‘That would make sense. A lot of people in the Suns have military training – if they were on hand, they might have recognised the gunshot. Like I did.’  
‘So that was the real reason she fired them,’ Krondesh said. ‘To protect herself and Karrean.’  
‘And then later on, she must have re-hired them,’ Dex said.  
Narack nodded. 'That's why I'm here. Getting re-hired like this is odd - particularly after what happened to Kat's business recently. Strictly, we were working for that bastard Karrean, but he insisted on having her as co-signatory on the contract.'  
' "Co-signatory"?' the Finch said, sounding confused.  
'It meant she inherited the contract after he died,' Narack said. 'She invoked it after he disappeared not long ago. We heard a rumour that Aria got hold of him. I don't suppose you know anything about that...?'  
'Why would we?' Dex asked, feeling abruptly uneasy.  
'Because one of our troops survived the encounter,' Narack said. 'And he reported the involvement of a turian, a krogan and a human. Oddly enough, I find a turian, a krogan and a human stood in front of me. That's an unusual grouping.'  
'Would it matter if we were involved?' Dex asked.  
'I don't give a fuck about Karrean, if that's what you mean,' Narack said. 'When the contract was signed in the first place, I was against it. I told the Ops Director that this guy was trouble.'  
The Finch seemed incredulous. 'But I thought all of you loved Karrean!'  
Narack guffawed. 'You really know nothing about us, do you, human? There are a lot of batarians who want Karrean's head. Oddly enough it tends to correlate with liberal political views. Funny, that.'  
'Liberal batarians ... ?' The Finch sounded like she was about to choke. 'There's such a thing?'  
Krondesh started making a strange noise. After a moment, Dex realised it was krogan laughter. When the alien reptile had caught his breath again, he said, 'Oh my, this is delicious.' To Narack he said, 'Looks like you're getting the "designated evil alien" treatment. Makes a change to see it happen to someone else!'  
Narack sighed. 'See this big fucking scar on my head? I didn't get that in the Suns. I got it back on Khar'Shan. Not everyone was happy with Trefak's appointment. Unfortunately his and Karrean's group won that fight.' Narack's face twitched, apparently in recall of an unwelcome memory.  
'So speaking purely hypothetically,' Dex said, 'if a turian brought you the news that Karrean was dead, would you be unhappy?'  
'Speaking purely hypothetically,' Narack said, 'I'd be fucking delighted. It would be the first good news in days.'  
'We handed him over to Aria,' Krondesh said. 'Turns out he and Kat were plotting a coup against her.'  
'A coup ... ? Fuck. I knew the guy was evil and ambitious, but I didn't peg him for stupid as well.' Narack snorted. 'Maybe he got slapped around too, when he had his falling out with Trefak. Nothing like an iron bar to the head to lose you some brain cells.'  
'We don't know what Aria did,' Dex said. 'But we understand he won't be coming back.'  
'Good,' Narack said. 'I hope whatever happened to him was slow and painful.'  
'We know it took about ninety minutes,' Krondesh said. 'Maybe a bit less. There was enough time for us to have a few drinks and a chat in Afterlife.'  
'About ninety minutes?' Narack shook his head. 'If it were me I'd have preferred ninety hours. But never mind. The good thing is, the mad fuck is gone.'  
'So, where does that leave us?' Dex asked. The Finch, he noted, was being very quiet.  
'I have a question,' Narack said.  
'Go on?'  
'Since you're here, I assume you have some way off of this shitty moon?'  
'We might,' Dex allowed.  
'What would be the cost for two seats on it?'  
'You and the other batarian?' Dex asked. 'Two, not three?'  
Narack nodded. 'Kherynt's probably been taken to the room. Honestly I don't think we'll be seeing him again. That place is a one-way trip.'  
'If you'll help us take down Kat,' Krondesh said, 'I can't see getting you out of here being a problem. Army boy?' He looked at Dex.  
Dex shrugged. 'We could use the help. If you're on board?'  
Narack shuddered. 'If it brings this fucking nightmare to an end - yes!'  
'That was very emphatic.'  
'This contract's been a mess from the start,' Narack said. 'We should've pulled out after all that carnage in the Lower Warrens. Letting Karrean plan that ambush himself was never a good idea.'  
'Uh, yeah,' Dex said, remembering the ambush. 'Umm. Sorry about that.'  
Narack sighed. 'That was you as well? Oh shit, of course it was.'  
'There were only two of us then,' Dex said, glancing at the krogan.  
'Only two ... ? Pillars give me strength. You know, I'm very glad we're suddenly on the same side. You probably blew away about eight percent of the month's profit margin in that one engagement, you know?'  
Dex blinked. 'Uh ... did we?' He did recall that they had shot a lot of Blue Suns troopers, but he hadn't been considering it in terms of cost margins.  
'Wrecked equipment, dead operatives, survivors' medical bills, wasted ammunition, time that could have been spent on other deals...' Narack shrugged. 'It all adds up. When this is over I'll see to it that the three of you go on the green list.'  
'The green list?'  
'People we don't accept contracts against,' Narack said. 'Because we know they're just too much fucking trouble.'  
There was that strange noise again. Twice in one conversation, the krogan was laughing. 'Yes,' Krondesh said, 'we are too much trouble, aren't we?'  
'That said, if any of you decide you want a job, let me know.'  
Krondesh glanced at Dex. 'I'm a krogan,' he said, 'and you lot don't usually hire us. Army boy over here has a hang-up about not being a merc.'  
Narack gave Dex a sceptical look. 'Really?'  
Krondesh sighed. 'I know, it's weird. We have to route around his issues half the time. As for our mammalian acquaintance over here, I don't think she'll be interested.'  
The Finch had her arms crossed and was eyeing the batarian sceptically. She didn't say anything.  
'Okay,' Dex said to Narack. 'I guess you're onboard then. So ... what do you know to do?'  
'Apart from shoot people, you mean?' Narack said. 'I'm a biotic. I seem to be good at directed streams of energy. So I can charge things and I can Lash them.'  
'That's a bit like the Pull technique, isn't it?' Krondesh asked.  
'Sort of,' Narack agreed, 'but it's more directed. You yank something, you don't just make it float off. The more general Pull-Throw thing I've never been able to make work. I guess my brain's just a bit funny like that.'  
Biotic techniques, Dex knew, were notoriously finicky. Some things people just weren't good at, for whatever subtle reasons of brain chemistry, neural wiring and personal experience. Techniques tended to be grouped into broad categories, such as the widely-used Vanguard or Adept-style training programs, but there was a lot of variation inside them. Dex said, 'So basically you're what we'd describe as a Vanguard?'  
Narack nodded. 'In Council Space military terminology, yes. The Hegemony has its own terminology-'  
'I'll bet it does,' the Finch muttered.  
He shot her a quick glare, but didn't reply. '-but I'm past caring what the Trefak regime thinks about anything. So they can fuck off.'  
'Which of the two are you better at?' Dex asked.  
Narack spread his arms. 'I'd say I'm better at Charging things than Lashing them. That's why I have the armour-mounted blades.' He looked down at one of them. 'Charge into the middle of a mass of enemies, let them cut themselves to pieces when they try to hit me.'  
'Nasty but efficient,' Krondesh said, sounding approving.  
The Finch shuddered.  
'Okay,' Dex said. 'There's stuff there that I reckon I can use.' He pointed at himself. 'I'm the sniper. The human woman is the tech expert. Krondesh here is the krogan wrecking ball, and also the resident expert on anything to do with social studies.'  
Narack blinked all four eyes. 'What?' He sounded confused.  
'Yeah,' the Finch said. 'You should've seen what happened when he saw my library. We nearly lost him to the books.'  
'Not quite sure about the wrecking ball bit,' Krondesh said, 'but I like the resident expert thing, army boy. Don't you forget it!'  
The Finch said, 'I doubt you'll let him.'  
Dex was still focused on Narack. 'And you evidently know SMGs,' he said. 'Now, the next thing. We'll need to collect this other batarian, I take it?'  
Narack shuddered. 'Collect. That's an unfortunate choice of words.'  
Above them, one of the ceiling fans rattled in its housing. The mood in the room darkened. They'd managed not to think about the Collectors for a short while.  
'Yeah,' Krondesh said. 'About that. We keep hearing references about a room?'  
Narack sighed. ‘Yeah, that.’ He lifted up his helmet, holding it in one hand. He turned it over, looking at it. He lowered it back to his side again. He said, ‘The room is on the other side of the main office. Down a corridor. We’ve not been in there – the Collectors guard it. When we got here, Kat was emphatic – the contractors aren’t allowed in there.’  
‘People get taken there?’ Krondesh asked.  
‘This place is apparently where the bugs have been taking everyone Kat and Karrean have sold them,’ Narack said.  
‘Batarians always seem to turn up in slaving rings,’ the Finch said, her voice distrustful.  
Narack glanced her way, but didn’t respond to her. Looking back to Dex, he said, ‘On the station, Karrean got called to an appointment down near the pumping station. Supposedly with Harbinger. Since he vanished after that, and his team got shot up, I’m guessing that was actually you?’  
‘I’ve no idea who a “harbinger” might be,’ Dex said, ‘but yes, it was us. Not whoever Karrean thought he was meeting. That was when we caught him.’  
‘Wait,’ the Finch said. ‘Remember back at Kat’s dealership? Just after you’d helped me get out of the cargo bay with all the pods? We were in that cupboard.’  
‘I remember,’ Krondesh said.  
‘When one of the guards went past,’ the Finch said, ‘I distinctly recall them mentioning the name Harbinger. Something about a volus consortium buying some sort of machine he had sold. And something about how Harbinger was apparently creepy.’  
Narack nodded. ‘It’s the boss Collector,’ he said. ‘Or he. I’m not sure which. It’s the only one that speaks. Talks in a really deep voice, and it has a fuck off powerful biotic corona. I don’t think we’ve met it in person, though. There’s this lightshow that hits a Collector body, then suddenly the corona appears and you find out it’s Harbinger. It almost looks like … well, like a demonic possession.’  
‘That’s weird,’ Krondesh said.  
Narack shuddered. ‘I’ve seen some fucked up stuff, but this is downright bizarre.’  
‘So where does this Harbinger come in to all of this?’ Dex asked.  
‘When you set up your appointment with Karrean,’ Narack said, ‘he suspected something. I think he thought there was going to be another raid on the dealership. So one of our teams was ordered to stay behind, with Kat. That was my team. Then the other team got attacked and dropped off the comm. And then that survivor turned up and told us what happened.’  
‘Army boy,’ Krondesh said, ‘I told you letting that guy live was a mistake. Fuck’s sake.’  
Narack surprised them all. He shook his head. ‘No it wasn’t.’  
Inside his helmet, Dex frowned. ‘How so?’  
‘If you’d executed him like you thought,’ Narack said, ‘there’s no way I’d have opened this door to you.’  
‘You wouldn’t know,’ Krondesh said. ‘He’d be dead.’  
‘No, I wouldn’t know you’d killed him,’ Narack said. ‘But I also wouldn’t know that you’re people who can listen to reason. So actually, not killing him was the right call.’  
‘It was her idea,’ Krondesh said, pointing at the Finch. ‘Soft bloody mammals.’  
‘Anyway,’ Narack said, ‘when Kat got the news about Karrean’s possible demise, she lost her shit. She ordered all of us to go with her. She went straight down to the docks and we all had to pile onto a waiting ship. We were off of Omega before Aria’s attack on the dealership even begun. We heard about that over the extranet, on the way out!’ He sighed. ‘When she flipped out, she properly lost it. Shouting, screaming, a full on tantrum. She wasn’t happy. I should have called the whole thing off then. I had good enough evidence, I think, to void the contract.’  
‘Why didn’t you?’ Dex asked.  
‘There are penalty clauses,’ Narack said. ‘Yes we can pull out of a contract but it means refunds for pre-billed time. Policy is not to do that unless there’s critically-good reason. I thought Kat was taking us out of the system, not in here to this shitty moon. By the time I knew what she was doing…’  
‘…You were already here,’ Krondesh said.  
Narack nodded. ‘The Collectors were waiting for us when we got here, including that Harbinger bastard. There were eight of us and thirty of them.’  
‘Thirty?’ Dex boggled. This was worse than he’d thought.  
‘Thirty,’ Narack agreed. ‘The moment we got here, Kat gave them four of us.’  
‘She … gave them?’  
Narack said, ‘She just said, “I don’t have any new slaves this time. But take four of these.” And the Collectors were on us.’ He shuddered again. ‘It was … not a good experience. We managed to shoot six of them. Then they dropped some sort of stasis field on us. And just … carried four of us off.’  
‘The room,’ Krondesh said.  
‘The room,’ Narack agreed. ‘We were escorted there later. We were shown the door, and told we couldn’t go in there. Kat said if we all obeyed her, it would all be fine.’  
‘It wasn’t fine, I assume?’ Dex said.  
‘She keeps finding pretexts to give people to the bugs,’ Narack said. ‘With Kherynt gone, there are just two of us now.’  
‘So Kat’s spending all her time with the bugs?’ Dex asked.  
Narack nodded. ‘All the time. She even has them guarding her room.’  
Krondesh looked at the Finch. ‘Might be evidence for your theory,’ he said. ‘Whatever it is that their tech puts out, Kat’s getting a super-strength dose of it.’  
‘Even by her standards,’ Dex said, ‘this is insane.’  
‘The room,’ Krondesh said to Narack. ‘Do you have any idea what goes on in there?’  
Narack said, ‘We can take a couple of guesses. Sometimes when the Collectors come back out of it, the drones are splattered with blood.’  
The Finch shook her head. ‘Not good.’ Overhead, the fan rattled in its housing again.  
‘None of us,’ Narack added, ‘have come back out from the room. Only Collectors.’  
‘Blood,’ Dex said. ‘From this room … are there any, you know, noises?’  
‘You mean like screaming, or desperate begging, or spinning blades?’ Narack asked. He shook his head. ‘No. And that’s the weirdest thing. It’s properly silent. Like whatever they do in there, it makes the victims go totally passive.’  
‘Something tells me,’ Dex said, ‘we might have to investigate this room. If only to put a stop to whatever’s going on there.’


	23. Into The Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Narack's troops have been taken to "the room" - the place where Kat's Collector allies do their unspeakable work. Faced with little choice, the team have to venture into the room ... but what will they find there?

Narack had made a crude map of the facility using his omnitool. He explained that as best he could tell, the Kalthean base had been derelict for centuries. However at some point in the past twenty years, the Collectors had apparently discovered the mines and had decided to adopt them for their own purposes. The facility had been cleaned up, restored and brought back to life. After they signed their deal with Kat and Karrean, this was where the Golden Syringe club victims were sent for processing.  
'The Collectors have a ship,' he explained. 'It's enormous. According to Kat it's big enough that it disturbs the local weather when it lands. Gets in the way of prevailing wind patterns, that sort of thing. Some of the victims get loaded onto that - the ones they don't have the space to keep here. What happens to them after that...' He shrugged. 'Apparently its most recent visit was less than a week ago.'  
'We saw nothing on the way in,' Dex said.  
'It would've been long gone by then,' Narack said. 'Apparently it's damnably fast. Especially for something that large. More fucking alien tech, I guess. Anyway, here's the map.'  
He brought it up on his omnitool. The main corridors of the base formed a rough L-shape on it, with the mess hall at the junction.  
'If we just walk straight down there,' Dex said, 'they'll see us coming once this door at the junction opens.'  
'Don't walk down there, then,' Narack said. 'Look. Here are the service corridors - those I could map.' He fixed the turian with a look. 'I'm going to take a guess. You came in via the maintenance door near the waste pipe?'  
'You ... know about that?'  
'Kat apparently doesn't,' Narack said. 'Kherynt and I found it on the first day we were here. Kat was having a paranoia episode and wanted all three corridors patrolled.'  
'Paranoid about what?' Krondesh asked. 'We're millions of miles from civilisation here.'  
'She's a long way from rational these days,' Narack said. 'Anyway we bunked off for a bit and wandered around the service corridors. We didn't have enough time to try hacking the door locks. But knowing where the back entrance was has value just in of itself.'  
'How close can we get to the room?' Dex asked.  
Narack brought up a new overlay. A series of red lines nested themselves around the main corridors. 'The red lines are the service tubes,' he said. 'As you can see, it should be possible to get all the way behind the room. This one runs the whole length of the complex.' He pointed to one of the lines.  
'There's another set of corridors,' Dex said. 'In addition to the one we came in through.' He stared at the map.  
'I think some of these were originally mine tunnels,' Narack said. 'Back when this place actually was a mine, I mean. When the Collectors renovated this dump, they opened the tunnels up. But they didn't put them to any real use.'  
‘What about surveillance systems?' Dex asked.  
‘No idea,' Narack said. 'My omnitool picked up some energy signatures, like those other Collector devices. But with all the cold, dead rock around us, it's hard to get decent readings. I guess it can't be any worse than the main corridors.'  
'Don't tempt fate,' Krondesh said.  
Dex was feeling his mood shift. The idea of fighting the Collectors had been a worrying one, but now he was feeling keen to try out the Black Widow. Also, it was beginning to sound like something seriously wrong was going on inside this room. His earlier moral concerns about killing Kat were starting to feel somewhat superfluous. If Narack's implications about the room turned out to be correct, then putting a round into Kat's head might not be too difficult after all. How far back did all this go? How long had she been enabling all of this? What did she know when she signed the first agreement with the Collectors?  
Overhead, the fan rattled and wheezed in its grate. A weak stirring of cooler, fresher air breathed out from its aperture.  
'So how do we access these tunnels?' Dex asked.  
'You would've come out through the hatch just beyond the door, I'm guessing,' Narack said, waving a hand at the Accommodation block door. Dex nodded. That had been an astute deduction, if also a logical one. 'On the other side of the corridor, there's another one a little bit further down the corridor. That opens out onto the other set of tunnels.'  
Dex considered that, feeling his mandibles brush the inside of his helmet as they flexed. 'Okay, that works. Now - do we know anything at all about what's inside the room?'  
'I assume some kind of mad abattoir,' Narack said. 'With Collectors. Or some sort of detention block. Or a torture chamber.'  
The Finch, who had been listening to all of this in uncharacteristic silence, shuddered. 'Well,' she said, 'you batarians would know a bit about all of those.'  
Narack fixed her with a glare. 'Oddly enough, human,' he said, 'I do actually.' Shoving his SMG under one arm, he pointed at the scar on his head. 'I got this in one of those detention blocks, as it happens.'  
She looked a little sick. 'So one of the slaves punched back, then. Good for them - or probably not, actually.'  
Narack stared. 'Slaves? No, that was the guy from the Security Directorate! He didn't like my answers about the rest of the protest movement. Apparently he wasn't too keen on fucking off.'  
Somewhere in the wall, a pipe groaned as an air bubble passed by.  
'So your colleagues had a nasty streak.' The Finch was scowling. 'I can hardly say I'm surprised.'  
'My colleagues-?' Narack looked incredulous. 'Human, I was a detainee! I got rounded up along with the rest of the protest movement!'  
She stared, then the scowl re-appeared. 'Protest movement? Some anti-human riot, no doubt.'  
Narack rolled all four of his eyes. 'No. This was the student protests, after Karrean's then-good-friend Trefak was appointed Archon.’  
The Finch moved her head. Dex caught a glimpse of her eyes past the reflections on her visor. They seemed uncertain. She said, ‘Student protests? Ypu have those?’  
‘We used to,’ Narack said. His voice was flat. ‘And no wonder. There were all sorts of rumours circulating. Delegates barred from the chambers. Blank cash transfers to peoples' accounts. A voting toll for the Superior Committee that was ten percent bigger than its membership. No-one outside the elite wanted Trefak in power. Anyone with a brain could see he was bad news. This was twenty-eight years ago. I was at university at the time.'  
'I'd heard there were irregularities,' Krondesh said. 'But ten percent? Surely that's a bit obvious?'  
'Traditionally the Committees have the privilege of secret ballot,' Narack said. 'It's been like that since the monarchy fell six hundred years ago. There's no way to know who the fake votes were. And that discussion got shut down pretty fast.' He glanced upwards, toward his scar. He tapped it with the end of his SMG. 'With guns. The student protest movement wanted a conciliar investigation into our allegations. After we got shut down, Trefak pulled the Hegemony out from the Citadel. Probably just in case the Council went and did something.'  
Krondesh snorted. 'That would be news in of itself. I thought the purpose the Council was economic self-protection for the Council species. With a side-order of being the ultimate cherry on the cake for political careerists.'  
The Finch winced. 'That much I can agree with.'  
Krondesh seemed surprise. 'You do?'  
'Seriously, how else do you explain Udina's career? He's not there on the basis of any merit. And I don't recall voting for him.'  
Dex was listening to all of this, and feeling glad yet again of the faceplate on the front of his helmet. If anyone had been able to see his face, he suspected they would have seen a rather confused expression. For turians, authority was supposedly something to be obeyed, not argued with, so other species and their habits of open and cantankerous political debate could be rather disorienting.  
He said, feeling his mandibles stir, 'The room.'  
'Yeah,' Narack said. 'The room.' He looked back at the omnitool display. 'The maintenance tunnel slants downwards for the first half of its path - it goes underneath the corridor to the main office. Then it bends back up again toward the room. There will be an access hatch at the far end - the design of all these corridors is quite symmetrical. But beyond that, I have no intelligence.'  
Dex sighed. 'Okay. We have to work with what we've got. But we need to think about tactics. I don't like the idea of us getting mobbed by a swarm of angry bugs.'  
Narack said, 'I'm happy to take point, if you need someone to do that.'  
'Don't take this question the wrong way - but are you sure you're up to that? That's where the fighting will be hardest.'  
Narack gestured to the scar on his head. 'I'm tough enough, bird. Apparently an iron bar to the skull wasn't enough to put me down all those years ago-'  
'A head full of bone, no doubt,' the Finch muttered.  
Narack glowered at her. He continued, 'Believe me, turian, I can take a lot of punishment if I need to.'  
Dex shrugged. 'Okay. It's your funeral if you're wrong.'  
'You've got an idea, haven't you?' Krondesh asked.  
'Biotic charges,' Dex said to Narack. 'Could they be used to collapse a Warp field? I've seen Krondesh do that with a Shockwave, and the explosion was pretty decent.'  
Narack considered the question. 'I've never tried it,' he said, 'but I don't see why not.'  
Krondesh was nodding. 'Yes, that should work. Although...' He hesitated.  
'What?' Dex asked.  
'Our new friend here will be stood on ground zero when the field pops.'  
Narack was shaking his head. 'No, that's not a problem.'  
'Why not?' Dex asked.  
'Simple. When I charge someone, I immediately drop and roll to the side. So I'm only on ground zero for a moment or two. Also, my amp feeds extra power to my shields when I Charge. It's only momentary - the spike lasts a few seconds - but I think this manoeuvre’s quite survivable.'  
'Here's what I'm thinking, then,' Dex said. 'You and Krondesh take the lead. Krondesh can drop Warp fields on things. You Charge them, and the resulting explosion takes out some of their friends. I can support the pair of you with sniping, grenades and my turret-drones. The Finch can set fire to things, stun stuff and take down electrical systems with her overload pulses. Basically you two take the front line and we support you and hold the heavy stuff off.'  
Narack just nodded. 'Sounds workable.'  
Dex looked around. 'Anyone else have any questions?'  
'You really want to use that gun, don't you?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex reached over his shoulder and pulled the Black Widow out. It beeped as it unlocked and unfolded. He looked at it, turning it over in his hands. It felt heavy and looked deadly. A round from this would have some pretty decent stopping power behind it.  
Inside his helmet, he realised he was grinning. 'Oh yes,' he said.

* * *

A short while later, they found themselves at the far end of another maintenance corridor. This one was in worse condition than the one they had entered through. The lowest part of the corridor was actually part-flooded with water - condensation off of the cold rock walls, Dex assumed. There were fewer pipes running along the walls here and most of those were dead and silent. Even the ever-present hum of ventilation fans was muted here. Dex's helmet readouts told him that the air was pretty stale in here. If he'd opened his visor, it would probably have stank of something unspeakable. The tunnel was dark - the only lights were those that leaked in from the occasional grating to the main areas, and the odd dim emergency light here and there.  
Up ahead was their target.  
According to Narack's map, the tunnel should connect to one side of the Collectors' room. Beyond that, they had no idea what they would find. Up in front of them, at the end of the tunnel, was a heavy grating. Some light was leaking through the slats, but Dex couldn't yet make anything out.  
He gestured to the others, pointing Krondesh to one side of the grate and Narack to the other. Krondesh's helmet nodded. He moved. His barrier was active, casting a faint bluish light around him. If he listened carefully, Dex could just about hear it fizzing and hissing.  
Dex gestured to Narack. The batarian took up station on the other side of the grate. Like the others, he was now wearing his helmet, so Dex couldn't see the face behind the four eye slots. Narack crouched down next to the large grate, SMG at the ready.  
Dex took one hand off of his Widow and palmed one of his drones. He moved forward to just behind the grate. Was there enough space to put a drone through?  
The slats were angled and close together. He couldn't quite see between them, even bending down. There was a slight flickering between them, like a heathaze. The slats cast narrow lines of lemony-orange light onto the smooth rock floor. Dex didn't want to risk starting a drone into flight straight away - for all he knew, it might collide with a Collector! Instead, he planned to push one through the bottom gap, and have it land on the floor, where it might be mistaken for a random stone or a bit of junk.  
The bottom gap was just wide enough. Dex pushed the drone through. Its sides squeaked against the grate's edges. He winced at the noise, freezing.  
No reaction was apparent; Dex kept on pushing. The drone slid through. There was a slight resistance when it met the haze. Dex pushed it harder and it popped through. He frowned. Some sort of forcefield? Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to be that strong. Oh well, no matter for now.  
He reached out to his omnitool and sent it the activation signal.  
On the other side of the grate, the drone's camera came to life.  
An image popped up on Dex's wrist display. The drone was sat on what appeared to be a tiled floor. The floor seemed to be made up of darkly-coloured hexagonal tiles, shining weakly in the light. Dex frowned. It was an unfamiliar style.  
The drone's view of the surroundings was limited but the scene was bathed in a dull, lemony light. Dex got an impression of a large space with vaguely-organic looking shapes in the distance.  
He saw no evidence of movement, or of any nearby Collectors. It looked safe for them to make an entrance.  
He put the Widow down and stood up. He put his hands on the metal and pushed against the grate. It flexed a little, but it didn't move. It was clearly well-secured in place.  
Krondesh asked, 'Shockwave?' The krogan kept his voice low.  
Dex shook his head. 'Too loud. Finch?' He looked back at her, seeing his own helmet reflected in her visor and his body outlined in silhouette against the thin lines of light between the slats.  
'Yes?' she asked.  
'Are there any open network connections? Anything you could hack to open the grate?'  
Her omnitool blinked to life. She looked down. She tapped at a few keys. Then she shook her head. 'I'm getting lots of weak signals. But they're like those signal boosters we came across in the other tunnel. Nothing my omnitool can interpret. I can tell you about how strong they are and roughly where they are, but I can't connect to them.'  
'Damn,' Dex said. 'So we're not hacking anything.' He'd hoped they could just hack the grate into swinging open, or something. No such luck. He wondered how they were going to get through. Krondesh's Warp and Shockwave trick would be noisy, but it might be their only option.  
'I do have an idea,' she said.  
'Go on?'  
'My omnitool could make some of the incendiary gel that I use, you know, for the incineration blasts?'  
Fire. Well, that sounded intriguing. 'Keep going.'  
'If I laid it along the bottom of the grate, like a paste, it could burn its way through. The edges will be very hot and there'll be some smoke, but it should make an opening.'  
'Is there any fire risk?'  
'This tunnel is just stone. The tiles on the other side-' she pointed at his drone images '-don't look flammable. I think we'll be okay.'  
Dex nodded. 'Do it. Everyone, move back.' He gestured them back to what seemed a safe distance down the tunnel.  
The Finch set her paste down along the edges of the grate. 'I'll hit it with an overload pulse,' she said. 'That should make it burn.'  
'I like this bit,' Krondesh said.  
Dex bit back the urge to say something snide about exploding krogan.  
The Finch stepped back. Her omnitool blinked into life. A crackle of energy sparked out, leaving afterimages dancing over Dex's vision.  
Then, with a white flash, the incendiary gel ignited.  
For a moment the light strobed in the gloomy corridor. Dex blinked back afterimages. There was a bang. The tunnel floor shook.  
The grate groaned and something cracked. The fire lasted only moments, giving off a puff of greasy smoke. The edges of the grate glowed a dull red, abruptly heated.  
'Push the midsection,' the Finch said. 'The explosion and the heating should've weakened the seals.'  
Dex moved forward. Positioning his hands to avoid the hot and smouldering parts of the grate, he pushed.  
There was a groan. He felt it shift this time.  
A shape appeared next to him. Krondesh had apparently volunteered himself to help. Dex and the krogan pushed together. The grate jerked forward, one edge pivoting out.  
A wedge of light spilled in onto the floor.  
'Looks very yellow,' the Finch said, sounding dubious. Dex waved for silence.  
He pushed on the grate. It shifted again, squeaking a little. A touch more space opened up. There was just enough room for a fully-armed turian to squeeze through, so Dex did. His armour scraped against the still-warm metal, making more noise than he would have liked.  
Narack and the Finch followed him without too much trouble. Krondesh was another matter. There was a moan from the grate, then a grunt from the krogan and an outburst of swearing.  
'Keep the noise down!' Dex hissed.  
'I've fucking got stuck half way, army boy,' Krondesh said.  
Narack said, 'Here. Let me tug this side.' The batarian grabbed at one edge of the metal and pulled on it. It groaned, then shifted outwards.  
With another grunt, Krondesh forced his way through. 'Thank fuck for that,' he said, sounding annoyed.  
The platoon sergeant in Dex didn't like any of this. 'Okay - are we done alerting every single enemy to our presence?'  
'Shut it, bird,' Krondesh said. Sarcasm wasn't lost on the krogan, but it was rather ineffective, Dex reflected.  
'What - whoa, this is weird.' The Finch had wandered off a little way. She was stood a short distance away from them, looking around.  
Dex finally had a chance to take in their surroundings.  
'Spirits,' he said. 'Narack - you didn't know about this, did you?'  
The batarian was silent for a moment. There was a click and beep as he keyed something on his Punisher. His helmet turned back up. The light around them glinted on the cruel shapes of his blades. 'We knew it was big,' he said, 'but this is ... unexpected.'  
Unexpected. Now there was an understatement if Dex had ever heard one.  
The tiles they were stood on were shiny, black and hexagonal, fitted together in a tessellated assembly. The tiles' surfaces had a hint of translucence - Dex could see faint rectilinear patterns just below their feet. The patterns reminded him a little of integrated circuits, although he had no way of knowing if they actually were.  
Contrary to his initial impression, the tiles did not constitute a floor. Rather, they constituted a long platform extending out from a curved rock wall. Looking up, Dex saw that the rock wall sloped in above their heads. The platform was about three quarters of the way up a roughly-cylindrical cavity. Looking around and down, it became apparent to the turian that the cavity was huge. The ceiling tapered in to a point above them - that point seemed a long way up.  
The floor was even further down. In fact, it was far enough below them that there were curls of mist drifting through the air. The humid fogginess made it hard to see what was down there, although Dex did form an impression of a floor and lots of machinery.  
At varying heights along the curved walls around them were other platforms. Even more bizarrely, several big solid-looking hexagonal structures were actually hanging in mid-air here and there throughout the vast chamber. None of them had any obvious means of support. Dex supposed there must be some sort of mass effect suspension, although none of the free-floaters had any kind of associated corona.  
'This,' he heard the Finch say, 'is weird.'  
'Is that your scientific opinion, mammal?' Krondesh asked. Now free of the door, the krogan had wandered over to stand next to her, near the edge of the platform.  
'Oh yes,' she said.  
Dex took hold of his Widow. He keyed it to unfold. He raised it toward the point of the cavern above, keying the range finder. He breathed in sharply, mandibles flexing, as he read off the number. 'Spirits,' he said.  
'What?' Krondesh asked.  
'The roof,' he said. 'It's a hundred metres, straight up.'  
'And the floor?'  
Dex aimed the gun down. 'Hard to get a decent lock through all this vapour,' he said. 'But I'm reading at least another three hundred down.' Dex scanned around with the scope. 'And the chamber is over two hundred and fifty metres wide.'  
'Who could possibly need a space this big?' Krondesh asked.  
'More to the point,' the Finch said, 'how has it not collapsed?'  
'Should it have?' Narack asked her.  
'The chamber's huge,' she said. Apparently her antagonism to the batarian had been momentarily forgotten. Her conversation was calm and incisive rather than angry. 'We're underneath millions of tons of rock here. The crater's central peak is somewhere above our heads. And this is rock that's been pulverised and jumbled by a meteor impact at some point. Not the sort that can support a big cavity easily! Yet here we are. Also, where's the condensation?'  
'Condensation?' Dex asked.  
The Finch pointed down, at the mists below. 'Looks like there's a lot of water vapour down there. But I can't see anything condensing on the walls. The ceiling should be dripping! But it's not.'  
'Let's get a closer look at these walls,' Krondesh said. The krogan turned and ambled across the tiles, over to the nearest section of wall. The others joined him.  
The Finch had her omnitool out and was peering at it. 'Well,' she said, 'isn't that interesting?'  
'What?' Dex asked. Up close, he noticed something he hadn't spotted before. The rock was faintly shiny, in a way that he hadn't seen elsewhere on Kalthis.  
'There's a thin membrane coating the rock,' the Finch said. 'And I mean really thin. Like, less than a micron thick. But it's everywhere.'  
'Is that what's holding this place up?' Dex was sceptical.  
'Not directly,' The Finch said.  
'Not directly?'  
'There's a strong mass effect field associated with the membrane,' she said. 'I think that's acting like an outward pressure - think like air in a balloon.'  
Dex looked around, considering again the size of the cavern. 'A field that strong should be obvious,' he said. 'I mean, we should literally be able to feel it. With our own bodies. And it should have been detectable even from orbit.'  
The Finch said, 'Not this one. The field is powerful but very tightly confined. It's not much thicker than the membrane itself, and it cuts off very sharply. My omnitool is literally inches from the wall and all I'm getting is the faintest ghost of the field itself. This is proper pin-point control. I'm impressed.'  
'More sufficiently-advanced Collector tech?'  
She nodded. 'Basically yes. Apparently they can play mass fields like a harp. The membrane must have eezo in it somewhere as its emitting this field.'  
Narack wasn't looking at the wall. Instead, the batarian was looking toward one of the other platforms, further along the arc of the cavern wall. 'I can't see any support struts,' he said. 'It doesn't look like anything is holding those tiles up.' He looked down at the floor below them. 'Presumably it's the same here.' He stomped on it. The floor didn't even rattle. 'Seems solid, though.'  
Dex had to admit to feeling a sense of mild consternation. The room was far bigger than he'd expected. Whatever could it be for? He'd imagined it as somewhat in the manner of a slave market, like you might find in the rougher parts of Omega or everywhere in the Batarian Hegemony. A place for victims to be kept, cowed and fearful, before being sent off to their fate. This chamber, though, was much too big. What it put him in mind of instead was almost some sort of missile silo, or a vast store room.  
'Can anyone see a way down?' he asked. 'If there are answers, they'll be near the floor.'  
'Hey,' Narack said, 'look up there!' He pointed to their side.  
To their left and a couple of metres up was another platform. A flat plane of black tessellated hexagonal tiles, it jutted out from the wall. Just visible over one edge of it was a surprisingly-normal looking door.  
'That must be the main entrance,' Narack said.  
Dex was nodding. 'It is in about the right place,' he said, remembering the layout of the map.  
'That looks like a stairway,' the Finch said.  
At one side of their platform, a line of black hexagons slopped upward along the wall, each hexagon positioned as a riser in a flight of stairs. There were no guards or handrails. It looked precarious, but Dex reckoned it was traversable.  
'Any other stairwells?' he asked.  
A quick search of their platform revealed no others.  
'Okay, I guess we have to go up there,' he said. 'Let me send my drone first.'  
The turret-drone was still sat on the floor, where Dex had left it, near the grate. He picked it up and keyed it on. It bobbed out of his hand as the eezo motor came to life. Dex sent it out toward the stairs. The drone flew off with a faint hum.  
Imagery appeared over his omnitool.  
Dex pointed to Krondesh and Narack. 'You two, go over by the stairs. Have your guns ready. Don't do anything until I tell you.'  
Narack nodded. 'Understood.' He gripped his Punisher in a firm hold, and took up station beside the steps.  
Krondesh also nodded. The krogan didn't say anything, but he did what he was told. The omni-blade hung under his Claymore shed a flickering, orange reflection onto the tiles below.  
The drone had reached the top of the stairs. Dex looked at what it revealed.  
The door was at the back of a rectangular alcove in the wall. Behind it were stood two Collector drones. They were just stood there, facing the door. Both of them were carrying guns that were recognisably assault rifles, but those rifles had an etiolated and insectile appearance. The two drones were silent and unmoving. They could almost have been statues.  
Dex's drone was right behind both Collector troopers, but neither of them reacted.  
'Two Collectors,' he reported. 'Both of them facing the door. No other activity.'  
Something caught his eye. A dark-coloured stain on the floor, beside the alcove. He sent the drone some new instructions, nudging it over to see what was there.  
'Spirits,' Dex said. He felt his mandibles shake and his breath caught in his throat.  
'What is it?' the Finch said, appearing next to him. She looked over his shoulder. She gasped. 'That is - horrible!'  
'What is it?' Narack asked.  
'Yeah, let's have a look.' Krondesh shouldered his way in. 'If it's got army boy swearing, it must be interest - oh.'  
As he saw what was on the screen, the krogan was cut off in mid-flow.  
Dex said to Narack, 'I think you might need to see this. Just in case any of them are anyone you know.'  
Narack joined them. 'I see,' he said flatly.  
Next to the door-alcove was an untidy mound of dismembered bodies. There was no order to how they were stacked. Hand and feet emerged from various parts of the macabre assemblage. Limbs flopped out, torn torsos stared sightlessly at the cavern roof and several decapitated heads lay on the tiles next to the grizzly mound. Various different colours of blood stained the scene with coloured wetness.  
'They're mostly ... turian and krogan?' Dex blinked. That was an unusual mix.  
'Remember back when we met Kat at her office?' Krondesh said.  
Dex nodded. 'Yes. When she had that footage of Karrean. Probably must've been a video fake, in hindsight.'  
Krondesh shook his head. 'No.'  
'No?'  
'I think it was legit. It was just that she got it straight from Karrean himself, not for a disgruntled merc like she claimed. I mean, Karrean was in with the Suns, and they don't normally randomly dish the dirt on paying clients.'  
'No,' Narack said, 'we don't. Putting peoples' dirty laundry in the gutter press is bad for business. Do that and your customers don't come back.' He paused, then added, 'Plus also it can mean you've played your blackmail hand before you need it. Waste not want not and all that.'  
'But you might remember,' Krondesh said, 'that she did say Karrean was specifically after turians and krogan. And that mound is mostly turians and krogan.'  
'You'd think it would stink,' the Finch said, sounding queasy.  
Without thinking, Dex said, 'It almost certainly does. But the smell isn't getting past the filters in your helmet. If you really want a whiff of excrement and blood, take the mask off.'  
She shuddered. 'No thank you!' Then she looked at him. 'You are really cold about this stuff, do you know that?'  
Dex said, 'I didn't kill them. Getting upset about it doesn't change the fact that they're still dead.'  
She shuddered again.  
Narack said, 'Those people were all murdered. See those rents on their chests? That's knife work - or possibly saws. I can't see anything that looks like a gunshot wound, though.'  
'Almost like someone was trying to hack bits out of their bodies,' Dex said. 'But - that's bizarre. Why would the Collectors want bits of our innards?'  
Krondesh said, 'Those two Collectors. Given this, I don't think we can leave guards behind us, can we?'  
'No,' Dex agreed.  
The Finch was staring at the mound of corpses. 'Why would they do something like this?' she said. 'I don't understand. It's horrible. Those poor people. None of this makes sense.'  
It seemed that the Finch found this spectacle particularly disturbing.  
Krondesh said to her, 'Are you about to tell us this is somehow morally complex, mammal?'  
Her head jerked around and she glared at him. 'Krondesh,' she said, 'I was in one of those pods. That ... mound. That could have been me!'  
'So it's four votes to nought that the bugs need killing, then,' Dex said.  
Looking back at the surveillance footage, he saw it was even weirder. The Collectors must have been aware of the corpse-heap right next to them, but they showed no hint of any reaction. They just stood there, resolutely facing the door, cradling their guns. Their phlegmatic behaviour was surreal. Dex was a veteran and had seen his fair share of violence, but this sight was revolting even for him.  
'Plan?' Krondesh asked. The krogan was apparently back into delegating mode. He also sounded eager to attack. Dex found himself sharing Krondesh's enthusiasm. This felt very different from several of their previous fights. The Waypoint gang had been a misfortunate affair on every level. Karrean had been a complete bastard, but Dex had to admit some reluctant sympathy for the man's underlings - for all that they were mercs, they guys who had worked for him probably weren't really that different from the turian himself, however much Dex might not like that fact. Plus also, Narack had rattled several of Dex's assumptions about mercenaries. The batarian seemed self-aware and reasonably intelligent, qualities Dex had never associated with mercs.  
Unlike all of those groups, though, the more Dex saw of the Collectors, the more they seemed like complete monsters. The turian felt an old feeling of resolve settling over him. It was a familiar sensation, but one that he hadn't experienced for some time - not since he'd walked away from the Legion, in fact. What was going on here was wrong, and it needed stopping. And that was something Dex could help with.  
The certainty that he was doing the right thing felt good.  
Dex said, 'I'm going to keep my drone up to watch them. I won't put the flamethrower on them - that will run the drone's power supply down very quickly. And something tells me we'll need those flamers later.'  
'Likely,' Narack agreed.  
Dex said, 'However, we do need to get those two down ASAP. I don't want them calling for help. Presumably their allies will notice when they drop off the radar, but there'll be a time lag. We need to make that lag as big as possible. Finch, you there?'  
'Me? Uh, yes.' She sounded a bit vague and was still staring at the tangled mess of bloody carcasses.  
Out of the four of them she was the least used to violence, Dex knew, and clearly this was on the edge of what she could deal with. He said, 'I assume you want to help stop the Collectors from doing more of this?'  
'Yes!' She was quite emphatic.  
'Good. In that case, I want you to drop an overload pulse on the nearest bug. So it jumps and stuns the other one as well.' Plus a well-placed overload-burst should knock out any nearby monitoring systems.  
She nodded. 'Okay.'  
'Do you want a shockwave?' Krondesh sounded eager.  
Dex shook his head. 'Not yet. I do want to test out how you can work with Narack here, though. When the Finch has overloaded them, I want you to drop a Warp field on the nearest one.'  
'Charge?' Narack asked.  
Dex nodded. 'Yes. I want to see if the biotic detonation is big enough to cook both bugs as well as the target. This is the perfect opportunity to do a bit of beta testing on this idea.'  
He didn't say it aloud, but there was one more advantage. Taking out the bugs near the door would clear their escape route back out from the room. If things went badly deeper in - which was possible - then an exit strategy could prove essential.  
'What if there are problems?' the Finch asked.  
'You mean if the bugs are somehow magically immune to electricity and dark energy? In that case, that's what guns are for.' Dex waved his Widow in emphasis.  
'Whoa!' Krondesh said. 'Be careful who you point that thing at, army boy!'  
Dex lowered the barrel. 'What I'll be doing is what I said I would – covering fire. Hopefully we shouldn't need it this time.' He nodded at the omnitool image. 'Those two appear to be on their own up there. But if support is needed, I can supply it.'  
Krondesh looked at the stairs. 'So who goes first?'  
Dex looked at the Finch. 'I need you up there first. Stun them with the overload. Then you, Krondesh.' He turned to Narack. 'I assume you need a line of sight to charge?'  
The batarian nodded. 'Can't do it from down here. Those tiles are in the way.' The other platform entirely blocked the view of the door-alcove. On the one hand, it meant the Collectors hadn't observed their arrival through the grate, which was good. On the other hand, it stopped Narack just charging them from here.  
Dex said, 'In that case, you follow Krondesh immediately behind. I'll be the last one up, then. Let's move.'  
The Finch swallowed, but nodded. Krondesh hefted his Claymore, the omniblade swinging scythelike through the air, the krogan apparently being content to ignore his own earlier admonition for caution with weapons. Narack checked one of the readouts on his Punisher, then nodded, apparently satisfied.  
They moved.  
The Finch darted up the stairs, omnitool out on one arm and Carnifex clutched in the other. At the top of the stairs she ducked down, just below the level of the tiles. She looked up, quickly raising her omnitool over the top.  
Dex didn't see the Collectors drop - the platform was in the way. But he heard the double-crackle of the electrical discharge and caught a white flash of reflected light around the edges of the floor above.  
'Dropped,' the Finch reported. Then she quickly rolled onto the platform above.  
For a moment Dex cursed himself - there wasn't space to retreat on the steps. They were wide enough for only one person at a time. Dex had missed that when planning. War was notorious for its ability to deliver surprises - he'd just assumed that the Finch would drop back behind Krondesh and Narack, but of course the human woman couldn't. Or at least, not without physically scrambling over a krogan.  
Krondesh had no hesitations. The krogan pounded up the steps, reaching the top and passing the Finch within an instant. He made a quick mnemonic gesture and his corona flared. A glowing burst of biotic energy discharged itself through the air.  
Krondesh stepped aside.  
Narack sprinted up the steps. He oriented himself at the top, looking forward. There was a bluish flash. There was a crack of thunder. Narack vanished.  
The barest instant later, another crack of thunder echoed out. There was also a flash - Dex caught part of the light, glinting off of the rock wall around the platform.  
'Wow,' Dex heard Krondesh say.  
Dex's earphones crackled. 'Two dead Collectors,' Narack reported. 'No other contacts.'  
'Heard and understood,' Dex said. 'And guys - well done.'  
The turian made his way to the stairs.  
A few moments later, Dex joined them atop the other platform. The two Collectors were very definitely dead, their corpses charred and torn by the energies of the biotic explosion. Their guns lay nearby on the tiles, bent and broken. However, the explosion had been quite localised. There was a carbonised scorch mark on the tiles where the first of the Collectors had stood and the centre of the scorch was still smoking, but other than that the damage was limited. The nearby walls of the alcove were untouched. Dex began to understand how Narack considered this manoeuvre reliable enough for combat use.  
The corpse mound was every bit as horrible up close as Dex had thought.  
Krondesh looked at the dead Collectors. 'You know,' he said, 'we're the aggressors here - we shot first.' He looked at the pile of bodies. 'But I don't feel any qualms about that.'  
'I don't recall you having qualms before,' the Finch said to him.  
Krondesh shrugged, his shoulder plates rattling. 'Well, now I feel justified in my qualm-free state.'  
'You feel justified in-' the Finch said, before breaking off. She shook her head. 'Never mind.' She looked at the bodies. 'Given what they were involved in, I can't say I feel much concerned for the bugs here either.'  
She might have said, Given what I was nearly involved in. She had come close to being one of their victims herself. The obvious fact didn't need pointing out, but Dex felt the shadow of it on him. Someone he knew could have been part of that heap. How many friends and loved ones had those people had? How many colleagues were sat around at work, wondering why they hadn't checked in? This was chilling.  
'Anyone you ... recognise?' Dex asked Narack.  
Narack shook his head. 'I'm not seeing any batarians. And none of these are wearing merc colours. In fact, they look like random civilians. I mean, as far as I can tell. It's hard to be sure.'  
He was right about that. The bodies were surrounded by torn fragments of fabric, shredded items of clothing and ruptured shoes. Little of it was intact and much of it was soaked in blood and faeces. Still, Dex couldn't see anything that looked like either a combat suit or a military uniform.  
'Do you think...' the Finch began.  
'Yeah,' Krondesh said, 'I do think. Quite a lot, actually.' Apparently the opportunity to snark wasn't to be missed.  
'I meant,' she said, 'are there ... more of these? Other mounds, I mean?'  
Dex looked up toward the arched ceiling of the room. It was huge. More mounds? How many could fit in a vast space like this? Was that what the room was for - a gigantic morgue?  
Narack spoke. He said, 'Let's worry about that when - or if - we get to it.'  
The Finch swallowed, but didn't answer.  
Krondesh had walked over to the far side of the platform. 'Hey,' he said, 'come and look at this.'  
They joined him, resolutely turning their backs on the corpses. He was stood next to a big hexagonal panel. It was at least four metres wide and there was a pedestal in the centre of it. Some green, glowing lights shone over the pedestal.  
'Is it just me,' Krondesh said, 'or do they look like controls?'  
The Finch had her omnitool out. 'There's definitely circuitry in there,' she said. 'And a mass field under the panel. I think that's supporting it, against its own weight.'  
'What is this?' Dex asked.  
'I think,' the Finch said, 'this might be an elevator.'


	24. An Alien Laboratory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first of the secrets of the room are uncovered. Krondesh is confronted by something that shakes him to the core. Further exploration is deemed necessary - but what lurks deep below, in the mists?

'Do you think this is how they get up and down?' Dex asked, looking at the possible elevator. Glancing over the side of the platform they were stood on, he noted that he room’s floor was a long way below them.  
'Possibly,' the Finch said. 'I guess there's only one way to find out.'  
'Shall we?' Narack asked.  
Apparently a decision was made. They piled onto the platform. There were two glowing symbols. Presumably one was up and one was down. Dex poked a digit into one of them.  
Nothing happened.  
'That was effective,' Krondesh said.  
The Finch looked up. 'There are no platforms above us,' she said. 'I'm guessing you just hit the button to go up. And there is no up. Try the other one.'  
Dex poked the other symbol. This got a reaction. The platform trembled, then it began to slowly descend. The motion was smooth and gentle, quite undramatic.  
'We're going down, then,' Narack said.  
The Finch looked down, over the edge of the platform. 'There's another platform below us,' she said. 'I can't see anything on it, but there are some doorways in the wall at the back. Maybe there's a gallery, back inside the rock?'  
'Looks like we'll find out soon enough,' Krondesh said. 'The platform will be down shortly.'  
Dex did a quick bit of thinking and made a decision.  
'We can't get split up,' he said. 'If we do, we're in trouble.'  
'So if we're going anywhere,' Krondesh said, 'we're going together.'  
Dex thought quickly. 'Okay, I want to designate a rally point. If we do get separated in this place, try to get back to the grate, back on the other platform.'  
'What if we can't?' Narack asked. 'What if this lift is one-way only?'  
'Then the spirits better be merciful,' Dex said, 'because we're probably fucked.'  
The elevator reached the platform, and stopped.  
Krondesh moved to get off, but Dex raised a hand. 'Wait,' he said.  
'What for? There's no-one here, army boy.'  
'We need to know if it goes both ways,' Dex said.  
He tapped the other key. The platform lifted back up, drifting toward the entrance above them. Dex's mandibles flexed with relief.  
'So we can get back out,' the Finch said. 'Thank goodness for that.' There was clear relief in her voice and the set of her shoulders eased.  
Once they were reassured that the elevator was reliable and went both ways, they rode it back down to the lower platform.  
'Well,' Krondesh said, 'that was fun. Now what?'  
Dex looked around. The new platform was deserted. As they were some way down into the chamber, they were closer to the drifts of fog that filled the base. Tenuous curls of mist seeped around the hexagons at the edge.  
'I can't see any more elevators,' the Finch said. 'If we want to go down, we can't do it from here.'  
'Let's have a look at those spaces at the back,' Dex said. 'There might be something in there.'  
There were two tunnel mouths at the back of the platform. Unlike the maintenance shafts up above, these ones were circular in profile. Their walls were bored smooth. The only contents were some odd-looking cables that ran across the floor and a line of recessed lights, running along the top of the corridor.  
'Nothing much in here,' Krondesh said as they walked down the corridor. He sounded disappointed.  
'Don't tempt fate,' Dex told him.  
The tunnel curved as they walked along it. After a short while, the main entrance was lost behind the curve. They came up to a door.  
'So,' Krondesh asked, 'what now?'  
Dex looked at the Finch. 'Any sign that it's alarmed?'  
She got out her omnitool. 'Well there are definitely electrics inside the door. I'm picking up circuitry-'  
'How can you tell?' Krondesh asked.  
She sighed. 'Alternating current. You get radio waves because it's cycling backwards and forwards. And magnetic fields as well. My omnitool's set up to detect these things. And it has some analytics packages running as well. For instance I can tell you that apparently the Collectors' favourite voltage is two hundred and fifty Volts.'  
'Oh. Okay.' Apparently the krogan hadn't been expecting a straight answer.  
'Two hundred and fifty Volts?' Dex blinked. 'That seems a bit high.'  
'It would make sense if you were operating lots of mass field based machinery,' the Finch said. 'High base power requirements, and all of that.'  
'Is there anything that looks like a surveillance system?' Dex asked.  
She shook her head. 'My scans aren't reading anything that looks like lenses, camera apparatus or microphones. There is circuitry in there, but it doesn't seem to connect through to the surface of the door. That's just metal.'  
'Unguarded,' Narack said.  
'Or rather, it was guarded,' Dex said. 'But we just killed the guards a few minutes ago. And apparently no-one was expecting an attack from within the room.'  
Narack shook his head. 'They didn't know about the maintenance shafts, then. How strange.'  
Dex shrugged. 'Maybe they just thought they were low-risk. Or maybe they thought the grate was adequate.'  
'Mammal,' Krondesh said, 'what's on the other side of the door?'  
'The other side?' The Finch shook her head. 'No idea. The door consists of several sheets of metal. I have next to no signal once you get more than a couple of layers in. It's not exactly transparent, you know.'  
'Shit,' Krondesh said. 'This is a fucking trap, isn't it?'  
A silence descended on the group.  
After a moment, Dex said, 'You're probably right. But, I didn't see any other way down from the platform. And we're no closer to having any answers.'  
The Finch said, 'Could we just ... sneak back out? And go and confront Kat?' She sounded uncertain.  
'And abandon my troops?' Narack did not sound impressed. 'Oh wait, they're just batarians, so you don't care, do you?'  
'That wasn't what I meant.' She sounded defensive and angry.  
'We can't,' Dex said, deciding to intervene before this escalated. 'This place might be full of reinforcements for Kat's guards. If we don't neutralise it first, they'll just come boiling out behind us. And remember, the central office is the furthest bit of this complex from the exits. We'll have to fight our way through whatever's in here - the best chance is if we take the initiative and get on with it now. Whilst we still have surprise on our hands.'  
'Plus we killed the door guards,' Krondesh added. 'That will get noticed eventually.'  
'Shit,' the Finch said. 'So we're going through this door, then.' She sighed. 'Okay. I think I've identified the motor. I can hit it with a pulse, to activate it. That should open the door. No idea if that will set any alarms off, though.'  
Dex nodded. 'Okay. Krondesh, Narack, take up station on either side of the door. Finch, you and I need to pull back.' He had his Widow ready in his hands.  
The team moved into position.  
Dex gave the human the nod. 'Do it,' he told her.  
Then he had second thoughts. 'Wait!'  
The Finch seemed irritated. 'You've changed your mind already?'  
'I think we should pull back,' he said. 'We're too close.'  
The corridor was completely free of anything that could serve as either cover or concealment. It was not a good entry situation. If there was anyone behind the door, they'd have no chance to avoid getting shot.  
Dex palmed another of his drones. 'If I put this just in front of the door,' he said, 'that might buy us a few extra moments.'  
'Do you really thing something's on the other side?' the Finch asked.  
Dex shrugged. 'No way to know. But we have to assume that something is.'  
He bent down and placed the drone on the floor. Withdrawing his hand, he stood up and sent the activation signal from his omnitool. With a beep and a buzz from its eezo motors, the drone bobbed up into the air.  
'Okay,' Dex said. 'Fall back, everyone.'  
They moved back. Everyone moved into position. Dex dropped down to one knee, holding the Black Widow steady. He had the door in the sights.  
He nodded to the Finch. 'Hit the door.'  
Her omnitool blinked, the light flashing against the rock around them. A crackle of electric energy splashed across the metal of the door. The machinery shuddered and groaned. There was a hiss as the metal plates parted. They moved -  
Movement boiled out.  
Dex caught a glimpse of a heaving, glowing, shifting mass as it surged toward them. There was a bang. Force smacked into him. He was knocked to one side. He fell into an instinctive roll.  
He hit the ground. A shoulder met stone. It was hard. The jolt ran through him. As he rolled, Dex realised his shields were down. Alarm graphics blinked at the edge of his displays.  
He rolled to his feet.  
Krondesh was bellowing. 'What the fuck was that?'  
Dex blinked. The krogan's armour was steaming!  
There was a scorch mark on the floor, just in front of where they'd been standing. A heathaze danced above it. As Dex stared, the haze faded.  
Lots of little fragments lay scattered on the floor. Their burnt, twisted shapes were vaguely organic. They put Dex in mind of tiny insects.  
'Some sort of swarm,' the Finch was saying. 'It came out from the door – and exploded!'  
There was an electric hiss and crackle. Dex's shields reasserted themselves. The alarm icons blinked out.  
'Everyone okay?' he asked. Even as he spoke, he was scanning their surroundings. No sign of any other attackers, and he couldn't see any movement from beyond the door. They were probably okay for the moment then, thank the spirits.  
'I'm fine,' Narack said. 'Startled, but fine.'  
'Same here,' Krondesh said. 'Whatever that was, it blew out my shields, though.'  
The Finch was on her hands and knees, inspecting the dead insectile forms. 'Looks like some sort of miniature robot,' she said. 'Lots of little drones. A swarm of them. I guess the explosion was some sort of automatic anti-intruder thing.'  
'Is that what they're for?' Dex asked.  
She sounded puzzled. She had one of the twisted, burnt little corpses between finger and thumb. 'I don't think so. The machinery looks way too complex just for a stupid little flying bomb. Some sort of search-and-destroy tech, maybe?' She shook her head. 'I don't know. Anyway it must have been lurking just behind the door.'  
'Do they blow up on the Collectors too?' Krondesh asked.  
'That would be pretty stupid,' Narack said.  
'Agreed,' the Finch said, sounding reluctant. She got to her feet, dropping the dead swarm-bot back to the floor. It landed with a quiet tinkle, its charred remains crumbling apart. 'Presumably there's some sort of IFF system. Fuck if I know how it works, though.'  
'Hey,' Krondesh said. 'Army boy. What happened to your drone?'  
Dex blinked, his mandibles moving. He'd completely forgotten about that. 'I don't know.' The turian took a look at his omnitool. 'It's completely gone. No signal. And - oh, I see.'  
'You see what?'  
Dex was looking at the logs. 'Seems the turret tried to flame the swarm. But the swarm burnt through its shields before it could fire. And the swarm drones actually smashed the turret. Shit.'  
'So we can't rely on your robot flamethrower to save our arses,' Krondesh said, sounding sour.  
'Apparently not,' Dex agreed.  
'Do you think it could have alerted anyone?' Narack asked. 'Was this thing a watch-nathak? Are we fucked now?'  
'Finch?' Dex said to the human.  
'I'm not seeing anything like a comms pulse,' she said, peering at her omnitool. 'No radio, microwave or IR bursts. No sign of unusual activity in the circuitry nearby. I think we might be all right - this time. That swarm probably did have a watchdog function, but maybe it blew up a bit too soon?' She cocked her head on one side. 'I wonder - perhaps your turret forced its hand? Maybe it was supposed to call for help, then blow up? But it saw the turret and had to pop first - or the turret could cook it.'  
'So the turret did help us,' Krondesh said. 'Good to know army boy's gadgets aren't completely useless after all.'  
The krogan was being snarky. Dex took that as a good sign. It was time to take charge, before there could be any more confusion. 'All right,' he said, 'I guess we'd better move through, hadn't we? Krondesh, Narack - you're in the front. And – I think we'd better space out a bit more. There might be more of these things.'  
They moved through the door.  
The space beyond was different.  
It was light from globular overhead lamps. They emitted a sickly, lemony light. The lamps were organic in design, looking like some sort of living bolus, dangling from the ceiling on noted, rootlike stalks. The lamps' interiors were filled with some sort of luminous fluid.  
'They look like some sort of biotech,' Dex said. 'What in the name of the spirits is this?'  
The Finch looked up at one of the lamps and she shuddered. Piss-yellow light stained her head and shoulders. 'Yuck,' she said. She was looking at the interior of one of the lamps. The shifting, glowing fluid inside was held in by a translucent membrane. 'If there was such a thing as rotten, radioactive honey - I reckon it would look like that.'  
'What's honey?' Dex asked.  
Narack said, 'I've seen it. It's horrible. It's a sort of yellow slime. Apparently humans eat it.'  
'Revolting,' Krondesh said.  
'Well their skins excrete slime when they're too hot,' Dex said. 'So I guess there's nothing too odd about them eating it too. I mean, nothing odder than half the other stuff they do.'  
'Excuse me,' the Finch said. 'I am here, you know.'  
'Try not to drop too much slime on the floor, then,' Krondesh said to her.  
The Finch looked down. She said, 'Honestly? I don't think that's going to be too much of a problem here.'  
The new area they were in was different. The walls weren't bare stone here. Rather, they were covered with fungal-seeming growths. Here and there, stalagmite-style shapes erupted from the floor and stalactite-style descenders lowered themselves from the roof. Some of the two met, merging into weird pillars. There were no right angles. Everything was rounded, melded, organic. The room had a half-melted feeling to it.  
'It almost feels like this place has grown,' Krondesh said. 'I mean, rather than being built.'  
'We're not meant to see this, are we?' Narack said.  
Dex had to agree with that assessment. He scanned their surroundings. They were in a large, unevenly-shaped space. It was as if several bulbous voids in the rock had swelled up and merged together. His omnitool found the environment confusing. It detected various electric and magnetic fields, and sensed rhythmic IR and UV pulses that could be some sort of network system, but it could make no sense of any of it.  
'Wait,' the Finch said. 'Something's bothering me.'  
Dex sighed. 'What?'  
Krondesh was looking around. His wedge-shaped helmet kept turning. 'I bet this place must stink,' he said.  
Narack reached for his helmet, holding his SMG in the other hand. 'All right, I'll take the bait,' he said. His free hand clamped onto his visor.  
The Finch spun around. 'Wait!' she said, sounding panicky. 'Stop! Don't open it!'  
Narack paused. 'What now, human?'  
'The corridor,' she said. 'When that swarm thing popped it out out a lot of heat. There was a scorch mark, and a heathaze! But - why did nothing catch fire?'  
'Rock isn't flammable?' Krondesh asked.  
'What about the debris from the swarm, though? Or Dex's turret? I mean, that has incendiary gels inside it, right? That's what feeds the flamer. Dex?'  
'Yes?'  
'Your omnitool - if it has military packages, does it have any that can do battlefield environment checks? I mean, like atmospheric chemistry?'  
Dex blinked. 'Uh, yes. But why?'  
'Could you run one, please?' She sounded deadly serious. Dex could see his armoured shape, reflected in the Finch's visor and outlined in sickly yellow light.  
He called up his omnitool and ran the atmosphere diagnostics. It hummed and beeped to itself a for a few moments. Then the result came back.  
'Shit,' Dex said. 'Shit, shit, shit.'  
Narack sighed. 'Can I take a sniff now?'  
'Narack,' Dex said, 'the human probably just saved your life.'  
'What?'  
'The, uh, air,' Dex said. 'It isn't air.'  
'What the fuck are you talking about, turian? Of course it's air. I can hear things. There's sound carrying. And the grating wasn't pressurised. We're not in vacuum here.'  
'It's ninety-five percent nitrogen,' Dex said, 'four percent argon and one percent neon. Fuck only knows where the neon's coming from. The pressure is about eighty percent of standard. But one thing isn't here. There's not a whiff of oxygen. If you tried breathing this air...'  
'Fuck,' Krondesh said. 'You'd be fucked.'  
'It's worse than that,' the Finch said. She sounded grim. 'There's no carbon dioxide in it. Zero partial pressure. So Cee-Oh-Two keeps outgassing from your blood, even as nothing else goes back in. You have no sensation of suffocation. You just quickly get very tired and confused. Then you pass out. And then within a few minutes, you're dead. No fuss, no drama - and no warning.'  
Narack wordlessly removed his hand from his faceplate.  
Dex added, 'And there are no actual toxins. Just inert gasses. So most omnitool VIs wouldn't flag it as dangerous.' Realisation dawned on him. 'Spirits. This is why we haven't run into any guards so far! They wouldn't expect any organics to survive to here, if any even got in!'  
'So what are the Collectors breathing?' Krondesh asked.  
'You know,' the Finch said, 'now that I think about it - can anyone recall if they actually have mouths? Or nostrils? Have we actually seem them with their chests rising and falling?'  
Dex looked at his readouts again. 'I guess we have our answer,' he said. ‘They're not like us. Either they don't respire, or they can somehow breathe this mix.'  
The Finch was shaking her head. 'Uh-uh. No way. No chance. I cannot imagine any plausible biochemistry that could get any use out of air as inert as this. Neon, nitrogen and argon! I mean, if you wanted to make air as chemically-dead as possible, this is kind of what you'd do. Two out of three of its components are noble fucking gases!'  
'What about the grate?' Krondesh said. 'I don't recall seeing any seals on that.'  
'Presumably there must have been some sort of mass field,' the Finch said. 'I didn't detect one, but if it was extremely shallow, I might not have done.'  
'So,' Narack said, 'this non-air is now leaking into the base?'  
Dex shook his head. 'No. The base's air was at point nine five standard pressures. So it's the other way round. The base's air will be leaking in here.'  
Krondesh said, 'Army boy. If there's no oxygen, does this mean your turret won't work?'   
Dex said, 'The turret's incendiary gels come ready-mixed with oxygen. So it will work fine. Remember it's designed for use in space as well as in atmospheres.'  
'Same here with my incendiaries,' the Finch said.  
'We will lose the fire effect my grenades set up,' Dex said. 'But the explosions will go off fine. They actually blow up through an uncontained internal mass field, not a chemical thing.'  
'So we just have to keep our helmets shut and sealed,' Narack said. He sighed. 'Oh well. Just as well no-one's claustrophobic, I hope.'  
'Oh,' Krondesh said. 'Good.' The alien reptile sounded mollified.  
'Shit,' Dex said. 'How are we all for filters?'  
Krondesh said, 'Lucky me. This filter set gives me thirty hours, apparently. Apparently Geth Armoury gear's worth having.'  
Dex looked at his own readouts. They weren't as good as Krondesh's, but the news was hardly baleful. 'I have sixteen hours,' he reported.  
'Eight,' the Finch said.  
'Three hours and twenty minutes,' Narack said.  
Krondesh sighed. 'The batarian has to be difficult, of course.'  
The Finch said, 'How long does it take to change a filter set?'  
'Not long,' Dex said. 'They're designed so you can do it in less than ninety seconds. Pull helmet off, pop dead capsule out, push new one in, put helmet back on again, engage seals.'  
'Does anyone have spares?' she asked.  
Dex glanced down at one of his pouches. 'I have several,' he said. 'They're calibrated for Palaven, of course, but you can all breathe that okay, so that's not a problem. It's not like we have any volus or hanar on the team.'  
The Finch nodded. 'And there is an atmosphere here, and it's not actively toxic. So if we do need to, we can just, you know, hold our breath and pop a capsule or two.'  
Narack sighed. 'That's more of a problem for me than for any of you,' he said.  
'I take it you didn't pack any spares?' Dex asked him.  
Narack spread his arms. 'We weren't expecting a trip to Kalthis,' he said.  
Dex disapproved. He felt his mandibles flare out in instinctive reaction. The turian army had beaten many lessons into him, some of them quite painfully, and one of them had been the importance of preparing for unlikely events. Rebreather filters were small, light items, a marvel of modern technology - they weren't heavy and they didn't take up much space. There was no real cost to carrying several spares, and there was a very big cost to discovering that you'd run out when you needed one. There was no sensible argument against loading up with a few.  
But on the other hand, what sort of person thought being a vanguard specialist with a merc group was a good idea?  
It occurred to Dex that Narack must be an impulsive individual. He made up his mind and went off to do it, without much in the way of second thoughts. On the one hand, that characteristic probably had its helpful side - it might be why the batarian had coped so well with being abruptly kicked off of his own homeworld. Surprises and change weren't frightening to him. On the other hand, however, it might also lead to questionable decisions - like personally taking on a frontline operation, even though one's actual role was technically a back-office one. And that particular mistake had landed Narack here, on Kalthis.  
Dex realised that the batarian's impulsiveness was something he was going to have to find a way to manage.  
Narack had interpreted his momentary silence as criticism. 'What?' the batarian asked, sounding a bit indignant. 'I'm supposed to foresee every possible future decision point, including lunatic ones?'  
'So much for being an analyst,' Krondesh put in with an audible snort.  
When he'd made platoon sergeant in his Armiger Legion days, Dex had found some aspects of the job surprising. His appointment had come as something of a surprise - in hindsight, that decision had been the first warning-sign of his CO's competence issues. Dex's original specialisation had been as a sniper, and pulling him away from that for a different role probably hadn't been a great idea. (The lieutenant had argued that if they didn't, Dex's next promotion would put him above the rank of whatever unfortunate ended up assigned as platoon sergeant, and as their previous one had been shot in a run-in with Terminus slavers, the hole had to be filled anyway. To the lieutenant's mindset, the first point had been the valid one - the appearance of normal process was more important than actual battlefield results.) One thing Dex had discovered in his new role was an unwritten and unexpected democratic problem - whilst his rank and reputation gave him a platform, he had to work hard to get his opinion respected. If the soldiers didn't think you were on their side, they wouldn't take you as seriously. Whilst actual orders would always be followed, there were all the other little things that wouldn't get done.   
Genuine compliance required some initiative on behalf of the subordinate. Dex had been used to working in a very small team, off to one side from most of the unit's structure. Suddenly he'd found himself sat just underneath the tip of the pyramid. That had proved quite a learning curve.  
Dex realised he was about to have exactly that same problem all over again - and this time without the legal backing of the turian Hierarchy behind him. If Narack picked the wrong moment to go off on his own initiative, it could spell disaster. Dex could see that a situation was developing - time to head it off.  
He reached down to one of his belt-pouches. Digging inside it, he pulled out a couple of cylinders.  
'Here.' He held them out for Narack. 'As I said, calibrated for Palaven's atmosphere. But if we need to be here more than a couple of hours, these will do.'  
Narack looked at them for a moment, then took them. The gesture was quick and decisive. 'I take it you don't need them?' he asked.  
'I have several more,' Dex said. 'If we need to stay long enough to burn through all of these, then we have other problems.'  
With the cylinders distributed, it was time to scout out their new surroundings. They discovered that the queasily-organic chamber was sub-divided into several sections. The first contained an unpleasant but also unsurprising discovery.  
'Pods,' the Finch said, with evident disgust.  
In between the columns and under the heavy yellow light of the globes was a collection of pods. They were laid in untidy rows. All of their lids were open.  
'They're like the ones in the loading bay,' Krondesh said. 'Where we found you.'  
'Yes,' she said. 'They are, aren't they?'  
'Have they been ... used?' Dex asked.  
Narack leaned over, looking inside the nearest one. 'There's something in here,' he said. 'A stain. Smeared on the sides. It looks ... oh.'  
'Oh?' Dex asked.  
'Vomit,' Narack said.  
'Kat was using druggees,' Krondesh said. 'It's probably no surprise if a few of them vomited while they were being podded.'  
Several other pods were splashed with fluids of various varieties. A few had torn shreds of clothing lying in them. Narack found a turian boot wedged into the bottom of one pod, apparently abandoned after it had been opened.  
The former occupants of the pods were not in evidence, however. Omnitool readings showed that the pods were at the same temperature as the rest of the chamber, and had no evidence of active electronics. They'd been empty for some time. Whatever had happened to their contents, it had happened in the past.  
The team moved on to the next section of the chamber.  
This one proved to be different. Fungoidal protrusions erupted from the floor, terminating in jarringly-flat work surfaces. Instrumentation and equipment sat on these work-surfaces. None of the devices were of recognisable brands and all of them bore the signs of Collector engineering, but what they were was obvious enough.  
'Lab equipment,' the Finch said, seeming puzzled. She was holding a flask in one hand. It was stopped, and half-full with a greyish liquid. 'This is obviously a flask.' She put it down and picked up something else. It was a tubular instrument, partly translucent, with a reddish line of something inside it. The surface was marked with regular intervals. 'I'm not quite sure, but this could be a thermometer. Look when I clutch the end in my hand, the line starts going up! Like it was getting warm.' She was holding the tubular thing tightly in one gloved hand and sure enough, the line inside was creeping upwards. She put the possible thermometer down and pointed at something else. 'That appears to be some sort of microscope. As for the rest of the things here, I have no idea. But they look purposeful.'  
The workbenches formed an approximate horseshoe around a set of central tables. The tables were made out of a brown, chitinous material. They put Dex in mind of Collector carapaces, flattened and polished. He suppressed a creepy thought that might be exactly what they were.  
'There's circuitry underneath these tables,' the Finch said, waving her omnitool around. 'And I'm detecting oxidation in the surfaces.'   
'Oxidation?' Narack was surprised. 'But - you said there is no oxygen here.'  
'There isn't,' the Finch said. 'But the circuitry looks like mass field generators. At a guess, there was a bubble of breathable air over these tables. Apparently it's been switched off.'  
Dex looked at what was on the tables. 'Must be to do with ... whatever those are,' he said.  
The table tops had raised rims. Inside them were several big, ovoid objects. They had mottled whitish-blue surfaces. Several of them had splotchy patterns on them.  
'They look like eggs,' the Finch said. 'Bloody big, though.'  
Krondesh walked over and looked at them. 'Oh, I know what these are,' he said, sounding moderately interested. He glanced at the Finch. 'You're right, mammal. They are eggs.'  
The Finch considered them. 'I dread to think what would hatch out of one of those,' she said.  
'That's funny,' Krondesh said. 'You already know.'  
She seemed confused. 'Do I?'  
Krondesh poked one of the eggs. He dragged the edge of one of his fingers along it. Dex noted that the armour plate of Krondesh's gauntlet apparently couldn't scratch the egg's surface. Whatever the shell was made of it, was tough.  
'These are krogan eggs,' he said.  
'Krogan -?' The Finch sounded astonished.  
'Don't sound so surprised,' Krondesh said. 'There are thousands of krogan on Omega. Kat getting her hands on a clutch or two isn't that unlikely.'  
'You sound very casual about that,' the Finch said.  
The krogan shrugged. 'A common misconception. The genophage doesn't stop us laying eggs. It just means most of them don't hatch.'  
Narack was looking at one of the other tables. 'These eggs are broken,' he said.  
Several shattered eggs lay on the table. Fat shards of eggshell were scattered around.  
Krondesh eyed them. 'Well,' he said, 'I suppose that's sad.' He sounded a little less certain but still quite blasé about this.  
'You suppose that's sad...?' the Finch said.  
Krondesh shrugged again. 'It's not like any of them would've hatched by itself, is there? Smashing up eggs isn't very nice, but it's not like the Collectors have killed any children or anything.'  
'Uh,' Narack said. His head was pointed at another table.  
Dex had no preconceptions about what newly hatched krogan looked like. It turned out they looked like smaller versions of the adult. Dex supposed that made some sense - prehistoric Tuchanka had been a vicious environment.  
It would have been essential for new hatchlings to be able to survive on their own, as early as possible.  
The only strong difference in appearance was that the plates on their heads weren't fused together the way those of adult krogan were.  
Krondesh regarded the small bodies in silence for a moment. Then he said, 'Well, it's hardly unknown for the embryos to develop. That doesn't stop them being stillborn, of course. They might look fine on the outside. But that doesn't mean that everything that should be there inside, is there.' His voice was flat and lacking in emotion. Dex noticed that the krogan appeared to be hugging his Claymore close. 'There aren't enough of them here. To reasonably expect a live hatching, you'd need at least a few hundred eggs.'  
The krogan sounded like he was reciting a passage from a book. The lack of passion in his voice was eerie. It also wasn't much like Krondesh. Dex began to feel very uneasy.  
The Finch waved her omnitool over the grizzly scene. She looked at the display. 'Oh,' she said.  
It occurred to Dex that it might be a good idea to intervene. 'I don't think-' he began, but Narack got there first.  
'What is it, human?' the batarian asked.  
'According to these readings,' the Finch said, 'their lungs are free of amniotic fluid.'  
Dex began again, 'Maybe we should-'  
'What does that mean?' Narack asked.  
'They were breathing,' the Finch said. 'All of them were breathing after they hatched.'  
Big feet thumped on the floor. Krondesh lumbered over. He almost pushed the Finch to one side in his sudden urgency. Dex saw her look up, then flinch as the massive krogan peered over her shoulder. Krondesh didn't appear to notice.  
He leaned forward, almost pushing his face into the display.  
He looked at it for a moment. Then he spoke. 'They were alive.' This time his voice was raw with emotion. 'They were fucking alive!'  
Dex felt his mandibles flare and his stomach drop. Oh no - the krogan sounded very unhappy. Was he about to snap?  
The Finch was stood there, just frozen. Krondesh turned his head to her and said again, 'They were alive!'  
Then the krogan did the last thing Dex would have expected.  
He collapsed to the floor. It reverberated under Dex's boots. Krondesh fell into a sacklike heap, hump pointed up at the air, arms clutched around his head. The Claymore landed next to him, apparently disgarded, clattering on the cut rock. The omniblade met the cold stone, hissed and winked out with a shower of sparks.  
Krondesh started keening.  
The Finch was still stood there, staring at the paralytic krogan next to her feet. 'What -?' she asked.  
'I think he's a bit upset,' Narack said.  
There was no sign that the krogan was paying them any attention. Krondesh was just lying there, repeatedly making that screeching noise. Dex winced as a particularly loud wail cut through his ears.  
He called up his omnitool and dialled down the volume on Krondesh's audio channel.  
'Umm,' the Finch said. 'Well, crap. Uh, I don't - I mean, does anyone have any idea what to do?'  
Krondesh was either ignoring them, or he was so completely distraught that he wasn't even aware that they'd spoken. He pounded at the floor with a fist. A filigree of cracks spread out around where he hit the rock - Dex winced at the force of the blow.  
Then the krogan rolled onto his back.  
He lay there, tilted at an angle, lying along one side of his hump, limbs spread out across the floor and head thrown back. His chest and neck were exposed. It was, Dex realised, a position of complete helplessness - not a quality one normally associated with krogan warriors. Dex was no expert at reading alien body language, but this posture made sense as an expression of complete emotional collapse. Krondesh was effectively declaring to the Universe that it could kill him now, because he'd had enough. Uneasily, Dex wondered what would happen to someone on pre-industrial Tuchanka if they ever felt the need to assume this posture.  
Probably nothing good, he supposed.  
The keening started up again.  
'Shit,' Narack said. He looked at Dex. 'Does the krogan do this a lot?'  
Dex shook his head. 'First time I've seen this.'  
The Finch looked back at the corpses of the hatchlings. 'And entire clutch,' she said. 'Hatched live, then killed.'  
'How?' Dex asked.  
'There's no bruising, no evidence of trauma. I can't see any cuts or gunshots. It looks like they were allowed to asphyxiate. At a guess the mass field over these tables just got shut off after they hatched.'  
'Why?' Dex asked.  
Krondesh was still keening. Speaking over him, the Finch said, 'I have no idea. But an entire clutch that fucking hatched ... that's suspicious as shit.'  
'What are the odds?' Dex asked.  
She shook her head. 'Bugger all, I'd say. I seem to recall hearing numbers around one in a thousand somewhere. Here we have eight eggs and eight hatchlings.' Dex hadn't thought to count, but a quick check revealed she was right. She continued, 'It seems ... more than coincidence, shall we say?'  
Dex felt a deep, instinctive chill. 'You think they were doing genophage research?'  
'Apparently a bit more than just research,' the Finch said. 'It looks like the Collectors have actually cracked it.'  
'But ... why?' Dex said. 'They buy adult slaves. What can they need infants for?'  
The Finch was silent. Then she spoke and her voice was grim. 'I see two possibilities. Neither of them are pleasant.'  
'I didn't expect that they would be. Go on.' Out of the side of his vision, Dex became aware that Narack was now stood next to Krondesh. The batarian was apparently contemplating the grief-striken and paralytic krogan. Dex wondered briefly what Narack was thinking about, then put it out of his mind. They'd have to deal with Krondesh later, or hope he snapped out of it. Trying to understand what was happening here was more important.  
The Finch turned to the egg-table. She checked her Carnifex, then looked back up. 'One possibility. Infants conditioned from birth will grow up to be better slaves. They won't remember having been free, and may not even be aware of it as a possibility. Call it the batarian solutiomn.' Dex knew that she was shooting Narack a poisonous glare from underneath her helmet.  
'But why kill them after hatching, then?' the turian asked.  
She nodded. 'Good question. It's inconsistent. And that suggests possibility number one is wrong.'  
'Possibility two?'  
'They're interested in the species' reproduction and development. Why, I don't know. But, if you mainly dealt with adult captives, then you would be missing a lot of data about the early years. Breeding up some eggs would be one way around that.'  
Realisation dawned. 'And that's why they were snuffed after hatching,' Dex said. 'They'd served their purpose.'  
The Finch continued, 'Also, it's obvious that they're interested in the genophage. The genophage is one of the means by which the current galactic balance of power is maintained. A cure would be hugely disruptive. Just look at the way the markets all nose-dived a couple of years ago when news got out about Saren Arterius's installation on Virmire - and strictly that was just a krogan cloning facility, not an actual cure!'  
'The Collectors seem to have an interest in our internal politics,' Dex said. 'They wanted to help Kat and Karrean against Aria. And now this. But - I can't see what direction this points in. All of this stuff just sows chaos. How does it help them?'  
The Finch was shaking her head. 'I think you're using the wrong model, Dex. Don't think of the Collectors like another minor faction or another random merc group. They're is something else. They're not trying to milk us for cash or credits. They're trying to destabilise us.'  
Narack was prodding Krondesh's prone form with a boot, Dex noticed. Krondesh didn't react in any way. Rather, he just carried on wailing and keening. In a moment of black humour, it occured to Dex that he now knew what a krogan nervous breakdown looked like.  
'I think you need to unpick that for me,' Dex said.  
'Consider Kat and Karrean's scheme. It was never going to work. Sure, they could possibly have deposed Aria. But Omega would never simply accept Karrean's suzereignty - particularly given that he apparently wanted to annex it to the Hegemony! It would mean an instant civil war and one with multiple factions. Although there's no formal government, Omega as it stands doesn't really count as a failed state - there is structure and order of a sort, and someone who's keeping a lid on the chaos. Knock Aria out, though, and what you have is a chaotic mess. And with all the competing factions busy killing each other, it's a mess that can stay that way for a long time.'  
'But where do the Collectors come into that?'  
'Consider what else is in the Sahrabarik System,' the Finch said. 'The Omega-4 Relay.'  
'Oh shit,' Dex said.  
'Yes,' she said. 'And the Collectors are widely believed to live on the other side of it. If they wanted to make an attack on the rest of the galaxy, they have to come in through Omega-4. Only they then immediately run into Aria's fleet, before they can even get anywhere else. And the Terminus Fleet is actually pretty fucking big.'  
'But if Omega is in chaos...'  
'No-one's in command of the fleet. It might not even exist anymore. Or it's busy shooting at itself.'  
'And divided enemies are easier to crush,' Dex said.  
'Leaving the Collectors a free run at relays one through three,' the Finch said. 'And then on into the wider galaxy.'  
'Genophage,' Dex said, realising where this was going.  
The Finch nodded. 'The Collectors release their genophage cure. I assume they have some way to sneak it onto Tuchanka. A krogan population boom happens, quickly followed by resource exhaustion on their homeworld. Combine existing racial and political tensions between the krogan and Council Space...'  
'Oh fuck,' Dex said.  
'You have a recipe for an entire galaxy to go to war with itself. Krogan Rebellions part two, basically.'  
'And when the galaxy has wrecked itself economically and militarily...'  
'Then the Collectors move in and finish us all off,' the Finch said.  
'And we get to find out whatever it is they actually want,' Dex said.  
'At a guess,' the Finch said, 'that will be nothing good. Their behaviour so far has not created an impression of good faith.'  
Narack chose that moment to do something rather foolish.  
After the fact and with the benefit of hindsight, Dex acknowledged to himself that he should have intervened sooner after Krondesh's collapse. Whilst he wasn't entirely sure what he would have done, leaving the krogan sobbing on the floor was hardly a better option. In particular, benign neglect created an opportunity for someone else to do something foolish.  
Narack, it seemed, was the sort of person who couldn't just stand there. He needed to take some sort of action, whatever that might be. He couldn't abide by passivity. Whilst he certainly had an analytical bent, he wasn't contemplative. Once he arrived at a course of action, he went ahead with it. These characteristics had served him well in the business world and they also suited his fighting style - realistically, someone who took vanguard training was probably also someone with an impulsive bent and someone who wasn't prone to second thoughts or ruminative self-absorption. However, behaviour that is merely headstrong and determined in one context can be foolish and ill-judged in another.  
Narack had successfully identified a problem, that being Krondesh's emotional paralysis. He also correctly reasoned that a helpless krogan was not a sustainable situation - Krondesh was too big to carry, even under Kalthis's lighter gravity. Narack also correctly noted that the krogan currently wasn't responding to anyone else.  
He took these facts and concluded that action was necessary. This was a reasonable conclusion and a necessary one. Clearly something other than words were necessary to spur the oversized reptile back into action. However, what Narack didn't do was consult Dex or the Finch before taking action. Being the person he was, he just went ahead and did it.  
Kicking a krogan was never a good plan.  
The first Dex knew of Narack's plan was when he caught a flash of movement from the side of his vision. He heard a crack as a boot connected with a chestplate.  
With a roar, Krondesh jumped up. There was a crackle of electricity and a flash of light. The direction of down shifted and lurched. Dex felt himself thrown off the floor as Krondesh's barrier exploded.  
He landed with a hard crash on the floor beside the tables. There was a muffled cry as the Finch flopped down next to him.  
Dex managed to absorb his impact with a quick combat roll. Most of the force went into the thicker padding over his side and shoulder. He felt a jolt but didn't think there'd be any bruising.  
He brought himself up to his feet. Krondesh had Narack in a neck hold. The batarian's legs kicked uselessly in the air. He'd dropped his SMG and his hand were clutching at the krogan's hands. Dex felt a lurch of fear in his stomach. He'd heard about krogan blood rage - was this what it actually looked like?  
How in the name of the spirits would they control a raging krogan?  
Instinct took over. The turian fell back on his training.  
'KRONDESH!' Dex barked. 'STAND DOWN!'  
To his astonishment, it worked.  
Krondesh twitched, then half-turned. He seemed to remember himself. He put Narack down onto the ground.  
The batarian stumbled and fell over. The Finch walked over and saw to him. She turned and reported back. 'He's all right,' she said.  
Narack shook his head and sat up. He rubbed at his neck with one hand. 'I had that coming, didn't I?' he said, sounding sheepish.  
Krondesh let out a frustrated growl, but apparently was able to swallow his anger. 'You're lucky, merc,' he grated. 'Most krogan would've just killed you then.'  
Narack leaned back. In a weak voice, he said, 'Well, thanks for not strangling me.' He reached out and picked up his Punisher, then rolled up to his feet. 'Shit. Okay, that kick wasn't a clever plan, was it?'  
'No,' Krondesh agreed. 'It wasn't.' The krogan turned sharply on his heels. Dex couldn't see his face, but Krondesh's posture suggested he was glaring. The turian realised that the krogan was looking straight at him. Krondesh grated, 'I want to kill some Collectors.' He took a meaningful glance toward the table with the array of sad little corpses.  
'I think,' Dex said, 'that won't be difficult to arrange.'


	25. The First Wave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The monstrous nature of the room and its occupants is now unarguably apparent. Any moral concerns over shooting Collectors have fallen off of the radar - Dex is finally faced with the sort of fight that he's secretly wanted to be in all his life. However, are the team up to the test that they find themselves in?
> 
> And just what is it with all these little glowing blue lights?

A quick search of the rest of the laboratory area revealed nothing of interest. The pods were all empty and the rest of the space was unused. Whatever the purpose of the place had been, it seemed it had been focused entirely on krogan infants. If the team wanted any more answers, it seemed that they would have to descend further.  
Krondesh seemed to more or less back to normal, although Dex could tell that the krogan remained very angry. He kept fiddling with his Claymore and stomping about as if looking for enemies. Occasionally he would emit a quiet growl. Dex knew that they needed to get moving soon, less the impatient krogan should take matters into his own hands.  
As they finished their search of the laboratory-cavern, Narack took Dex aside. 'I'm not seeing any sign of my troops here,' he said.  
'At a guess they've been taken further down,' Dex said.  
'We need to go there, then,' Narack said.  
Dex nodded. 'Okay, I guess it's time we moved on.'  
He gave the orders, and the four of them made their way back out to the main platform beyond the tunnel. Some investigation revealed another lift platform. They had a brief debate about whether it was safe to use, but it was concluded that there were no other plausible alternatives. The only way was down.  
Now that they knew how to operate the lift platforms, setting it into motion was straightforward enough. With the four of them stood on it, the platform began to descend.  
The platform moved with a gentle whirr. Dex could feel it thrumming under his feet. As they sank downwards, curls of mist thickened around them. There was apparently enough water vapur in the air here to set up some decent condensation. It made Dex uneasy. He couldn't see clearly through it. Anyone could be waiting for them, watching them descend. All of his military instincts were against this. He was holding his Widow, gun fully unfolded, trying to keep watch over their surroundings.  
The mist was disturbed just below them. The platfrom dropped into the twisting, coiling tendrils. An electric shiver went through Dex. To his surprise, a fat spark hissed and spat its way off of the barrel of his Widow.  
'What was that?' he said. He noticed that they were below the disturbance in the mist.  
The Finch was looking at her omnitool. 'That's unexpected,' she said.  
'What?'  
'We just went through a mass field. Like a kinetic barrier, except it parted for us.'  
'That makes no sense.' A kinetic barrier that parted to let enemy troops through? What possible use could that be?  
She tapped a couple of keys on her omnitool. 'Oh, I see.'  
'See what?'  
'The composition of the air's changed,' she said. 'Now we're below the barrier, I'm reading eighteen percent oxygen all of a sudden. The barrier isn't to keep us out, it's to keep the oxygen in.'  
'There's something down here that breathes,' Krondesh said, sounding eager.  
'Probably several somethings,' the Finch said.  
'Good. If they breathes, I can kill them.' The krogan sounded eager.  
Dex felt his mandibles move.  
'This also means there are enemies down here,' he said.  
It occurred to him that they were stood on an exposed moving platform, descending straight into enemy territory. In tactical terms, this was bad. He looked down. The condensation mist still swirled below them but he could see definite shapes within it. Machinery, he thought, although the details were still indistinct. As the platform sank down, they were becoming clearer.  
A thought occurred to Dex. If he had been down there on the floor with his Widow, instead of up here, he would probably have been able to get a few shots off at the platform.  
'Everyone, get down,' he said, putting his most commanding tones into his voice. Following his own instructions, he dropped flat to the platform's surface, leaning over his sniper rifle. 'Keep low. We have to assume there'll be shots soon.'  
Thankfully, none of the others argued. Even Krondesh dropped to the floor without fuss. The krogan's hump protruded further up than Dex would like, but there was no help for that. The shifting glow of the krogan's barrier played over him, so Dex hoped that would count for something.  
So far the team had met with little opposition. Dex very much doubted that would continue -  
'Lights,' the Finch said quietly. 'In the mist. Below and ahead.'  
Dex looked in the direction she was indicating. Sure enough, there were a couple of faint glimmers of light. They hadn't been visible before because there had been too much mist in the way, but as the platform approached the floor of the room, they were brightening.  
'Shit,' Dex said quietly. 'Okay everyone, get ready.'  
'What do you want me to do?' Narack asked.  
Dex had almost forgotten about the vanguard. His mandibles flared in irritation with himself. He felt them brush the inside of his helmet.  
'Fire off bursts with that Punisher,' Dex told him.  
'It's an SMG. I can't snipe with it.'  
'I don't want you to. I want suppressing fire, dumped out randomly into the mist. Keep them guessing.'  
'Oh, I see.' From Narack's tone, the alien did understand too.  
'Also, if any of them try to run at us, or get under our fire - charge them!'  
'Got it,' the batarian said.  
'Krondesh,' Dex said. 'If we get mobbed, I want you dropping shockwaves on them. I'm well up for seeing some Collectors flying helplessly through the air!'  
'Got it,' Krondesh said. His voice was filled with a cold anticipation.  
'Also if you see any likely targets for Narack, try dropping a Warp blast on them. I'd like to see if this Warp-Charge theory works.'  
'I assume I'm on tech support again?' the Finch asked.  
In spite of himself, Dex had to smile at that. 'Yes. I know hacking Collector electronics probably isn't workable, but if you can fry anything with an overload-pulse, please do! Also I'm well up for seeing Collectors covered in incendiary gel and set on fire.'  
'Got it,' she said. 'If they've given us all this free oxygen, it'd be rather rude not to use it, right?'  
'Quite,' Dex said. 'I'll be covering all of you with my favourite new gun here. Also I'm going to drop a drone-'  
He didn't get to finish. Three things happened all at once.  
With a slight bump, the platform reached the floor of the room.  
Gunfire erupted all around them. Streams of rounds tore through the space where their heads had been, moments before. Glowing beams hissed and crackled through the mist. Dex took a moment to wonder what in the name of the spirits they were - some sort of actual energy weapon?  
Then he saw blurred shapes and faint blue lights in the mist.  
'What the fuck?' he heard the Finch say. 'They almost look - human!'  
Shapes erupted from the mist. They were running. They were human-shaped, and apparently naked. They had grey skin, blue lights dotted across them and what looked like cybernetic cables wied into them. They were emitting a horrible ululating noise, a dozen cut throats gurgling in unison.  
And Dex had seen these things before.  
'Oh fuck,' he said. 'Husks!'  
There were a lot of Husks.  
'You know these things?' he heard the Finch demand.  
The Husks were running. For some gangly, awkward-looking things, they were rather fast. They were closing. Thin twirls of mist shuddered and split around them.  
'The Citadel,' Dex said. 'The geth attack. We fought these things there. Finch! Get overloading - it will stun them! Krondesh! Shockwave, to our left. Narack - charge the ones on the right. And no-one let them grab you!'  
The Husks were almost on them. There was a flash of light and a thunderclap of displaced air as Narack vanished. An instant later, several Husks were hurled into the air. Dex heard the rattling bark of the Punisher.  
Krondesh leapt to his feet and roared. He gestured, and a shockwave ripped out. Three Husks spun into the air.  
There was a whoosh and Dex saw a tracery plume of incendiary gel spurt over their heads. It splashed on several Husks in front of him. Flames leapt up and the Husks stumbled. Flickering orange fire-light bloomed through the fog. Then the Finch let rip an overload pulse. Fire and electricity combined with a bang.  
Charred parts of dead Husk splattered down around them. With a shudder Dex had to wipe a smear off of his visor. He noted that the Husk-wreckage splashed around them had bits of wrecked circuitry and mechanism embedded in it.  
Then the remainders of the wave of Husks was on them.  
Dex leapt to his feet, clutching the Widow in his left hand. The weight of it yanked at his shoulder. He was momentarily very glad that he'd kept his fitness up since abandoning the Army.  
A Husk was in front of him. Glowing blue eyes, without pupils. Mechanical cords embedded in the neck. Lifeless, metal-infused skin. A grasping hand, reaching forwards, too fast -  
Dex flexed the fingers on his right hand in a pattern that he hadn't used since he'd left the Army. It tripped a fast-response reaction from his omnitool. A glowing orange blade hissed into life, extending beyond his clutched hand.  
Instead of dodging the grasping Husk, Dex stepped forward. Surprised, the Husk hesitated for just a moment. Dex ducked under the Husk's arm. In one smooth movement he brought the omniblade up, slashing it across the Husk's chest.  
The blade ripped through the Husk. Viscera, broken machinery and torn meat fell out. The Husk staggered back. Amazingly, unbelievably, it didn't fall! Dex had delivered what should have been a killing blow, and yet it tried to regain its feet!  
The turian didn't give it the chance.  
He let the momentum of his swung arm carry him around in a part-circle. As it did, he leaned to one side and raised his left foot off the ground. He delivered a vicious kick to the Husk's knee. Armoured turian boot met Husk bone, and bone gave way. There was a sickening crack as the knee fractured. The Husk collapsed to the floor.  
Dex stomped on its neck. He felt vertebrae crunch under his foot. The Husk was still.  
There was a shadow by his foot.  
Instinctively, Dex dropped into a roll.  
Another Husk sailed through the air where his chest had been a moment ago. It may have been the turian's imagination, but the construct looked startled by his manoeuvre. The Husk sprawled to the ground a couple of feet away.  
Dex rolled back to his feet. A quick check revealed he still had his Widow. The range was too close, though. Instead, Dex resorted to delivering an over-arm omniblade punch, straight into the Husk's face.  
The blade cut straight through the Husk's skull. The Husk dropped. Dex withdrew his arm. He was in a fighting crouch, poised over the corpse. He was breathing hard and could feel his heart pounding in his chest.  
He drew uo to his feet and surveyed the situation.  
The Finch had sensibly stayed low to the ground. From the coils of blackish smoke drifting through the air, and the presence of several charred Husk corpses, she'd kept up the supply of fire and electricity. She caught his eyes and Dex gave her a quick approving nod.  
Nearby Dex could hear Krondesh roaring. Apparently the krogan was getting on okay. A quick check revealed that he'd just dispatched the last of the Husks that had attacked him.  
Narack had apparently managed to get grabbed by one and was wrestling with it. Apparently it had been one of a cluster that he'd charged - several other very dead Husk carcasses were strewn around. As Dex looked, Narack managed to get a decisive hold on the Husk, pull it away from him with one hand, and dispatch it with a rattling burst of Punisher-fire.  
Sudden silence descended.  
'Okay,' Dex rasped. 'Status check. Anyone injured?'  
Three negatives came back.  
'Anyone else see any movement?'  
They all peered into the mist. For the moment, all was stillness.  
'Good,' Dex said. He decided to lay out a quick pan. 'We need to move. They must have spotted the platform as it descended. I don't see any guns on this lot, so whoever was shooting us is still out there. We need to find cover. Krondesh, take point. Narack, cover our left flank. Finch, I want you at the back. I'm taking the right. If you get separated - don't! And if it does happen for any reason at all, everyone, come back to the platform and hide somewhere nearby. If we don't come back for you within fifteen minutes, take the platform back up and get the fuck out of here.'  
‘So we’re definitely going forward?’ the Finch asked.  
‘Yes,’ Dex said.


	26. Monstrous Objectives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team are at the bottom of the room now. And they're starting to meet with some serious opposition. The chances of survival for Narack's troops are looking slim, but there's no choice but to press forwards...

Dex had thrown his drone out into the mist. It was relaying signals back to his omnitool. He was keeping an eye on the displays. Hopefully they would see any opposition before it saw them. For the moment, things were eerily quiet again.  
The omnipresent fog down here at the base of the room swirled around them.  
They moved into the mist, stepping over Husk corpses as they did so. Dex tried not to look too closely at them. The destruction itself was fine - he'd seen worse in the aftermath of slaver raids whilst out on deployment in the Traverse. Rather, it was what the corpses implied. It reminded him of things from the Citadel.  
Still, unpleasant as the associations were, he had to brief the team.  
As they moved, Dex said, 'Have any of you heard of dragons' teeth?'  
Krondesh shook his head. Narack also seemed puzzled. The Finch, however, hesitated, then said, 'I have. They're a geth thing, aren't they?'  
Dex took a wild guess. He asked, 'They had one on Noveria?'  
'Uh,' she said. 'You know I mentioned the other lab, that we weren't supposed to know about?'  
'The one your boyfriend worked in,' Krondesh put in.  
'Yes, that one,' she said, with a touch of acid in her voice. 'And as I said before, he was never quite my boyfriend. For goodness' sake, he vanished before we got that far!'   
Krondesh started making a noise. The krogan, Dex realised, was laughing. Krondesh said, 'Evidently you made the right impression, then.'  
'I'm missing some context,' Narack put in.  
'Our human friend here,' Dex said, 'used to work for a slightly dodgy corporation.'  
'Oh really? There are lots of those.'  
'Yes, but this was the sort where people who ask the wrong questions have a habit of dying under odd circumstances.'  
'Or asking any questions at all,' the Finch put in.  
'And they seem to have been doing legally-dodgy stuff with alien tech,' Dex said.  
Narack just sighed when he heard that.  
'Anyway,' the Finch said, 'one time when we did coffee he had some documents up on his pad. I wasn't supposed to see them, I think, but I did. And I remember the heading on one of them was 'dragons' teeth'.'  
Dex said, 'They look like a metallic tripod with a circular ring at the top. The ring glows. In the centre there's a telescopic spike. It goes up several metres. The geth put you over the spike, then impale you.'  
'That's messed up,' Narack said.  
'It gets worse,' Dex said. 'The spike pumps you with something. We don't know what. But it turns you into a Husk.'  
Krondesh looked at Dex, then looked down at the dead Husk nearest his feet. 'Like one of these?' he asked.  
'Exactly like one of those,' Dex said, feeling grim. 'I know about it because the geth were setting them up. During the Battle of the Citadel, I mean. Grabbing random people and shoving them on the spikes - and then the resulting Husks would fight for them!'  
'Shit,' Narack said. He paused, apparently considering the new data. 'But also, that's a pretty efficient invasion strategy. If you care about territory or infrastructure, but not the people who live there, I mean.'  
'You almost sound impressed,' the Finch said, with evident revulsion.  
'Well you've got to admit that it's a cost-effective business plan,' Narack said. 'The analyst in me can see the logic.'  
The Finch shuddered but said nothing.  
'Wait,' Krondesh said. 'We're running into geth-style Husks here.'  
'Yes,' Dex said. 'And that means two things. One, there's definitely a geth-Collector connection. And two, there are dragons' teeth somewhere in this room.'  
'Fuck,' Krondesh said.  
'That might explain,' Dex said, 'why they ran Husks at us instead of just gunning us down.'  
'They want to drag us off,' the Finch said, in a haunted voice.  
'Wait,' Narack said, 'you think they're planning on putting us on those spikes?'  
'Yes,' Dex said. 'I don't know when they realised we were here - presumably some time after we killed those Collectors upstairs. But they definitely know that we're here now!'  
'So it's basically proven,' the Finch said. 'There is a geth-Collector connection. This is pretty weird. We're in over our heads, aren't we?'  
Narack spoke. He sounded grimmer than usual. 'So, I'm thinking this doesn't bode well for my troops, then?'  
'I haven't seen any four-eyed Husks,' Dex said.  
'Yet,' Krondesh put in.  
An apprehensive silence descended.  
Grainy images became apparent on Dex's display. 'Machinery up ahead,' he said. 'Looks large - racks of pipes, apparently.'  
'A pumping station?' Krondesh asked.  
'Possibly. Anyway my drone can't see clearly amongst the racks. It could be ambush point.'  
'Or some cover,' Krondesh said.  
The first of the clutches of pipes became clear in the mist. There were several sets of pipe racks, grouped around some other miscellaneous equipment. All of it had a strange aesthetic, lumpy, bulbous, seeming almost as if it had all been half-melted at some point. Dex had no idea what any of it did. There were no visible VI interfaces or control systems of any kind. Some of the things might have been chemical storage tanks, albeit oddly egg-like in appearance. There were things that were definitely some sort of manipulator-arm, loading pads and storage cages. There were also several large, complex shapes whose function Dex had not the faintest notion.  
The Finch said, 'I'm reading modulated infrared bursts. The information entropy is consistent with some sort of packet switching. Could be a wireless network.'  
'Any idea what it's doing?'  
She shook her head. 'None at all, sorry. The same problem as before. I can tell you that there are several nodes with high activity relatively nearby.'  
Dex felt a shiver. 'Mark them for us with your omnitool, could you?'  
'Sure. Here are the locations.' She sent over the data.  
Then they reached the rack of pipes. The rack was two and a half metres high. It ran for ten or so metres across the ground. Its central linear section contained numerous pipes of various widths. At both ends the pipes branched and changed directions. Some of them plunged into the floor. Some of them ran along it, off into the mist. Others snaked off toward the other pipe-racks, and some of them merged into the other items of equipment.  
Dex gestured for the group to fan out along the rack. Beyond the pipes would be a perfect place for an enemy team to attack them. He was also on edge because so far, they hadn't found the source of the energy beams that had fired at the elevator-platform. All of his instincts were telling him that this was a bad situation.  
'Uh, Dex?' the Finch said.  
'Yes?'  
'Activity on one of the nodes just went up,' she said. 'I mean, way up. I don't know what it's transmitting, or where to, but it's knocking out packets five times faster than any of the others.'  
And then they were attacked from behind.  
The first Dex knew was when a hammerblow of force slammed him to the ground. His side smacked the rocky ground. He swallowed a gasp, rolling to one side. His suit's kinetic barriers flared and stuttered. The readoust told him he'd just been shot. Luckily the barriers apparently stopped it cold.  
Sparks flashed off of the pipes. There was a rattle of hammers as rounds smashed into the metal.  
'Get behind the pipes!' Dex barked, kicking himself into a run as he did so. Inside his head, he cursed himself. The Collectors had apparently snuck up behind them, and he'd been stupid enough not to watch out for that!  
Rounds hissed and cracked down around them.  
Moments later, the team had taken shelter behind the pipeworks. The run had lasted only moments, but it felt like centuries. Dex's legs felt shaky. He was breathing hard again.  
He crouched down at the far end of the pipe assembly, clutching his Widow.  
'How did they get behind us?' Krondesh was demanding.  
Dex ignored the krogan's questioning. 'Finch,' he said, 'keep an eye behind us. Krondesh, Narack, look off to the sides. Look out for movement amongst the other racks. I'm going to try and thin whatever's in front of us.'  
He raised the scope of the Widow to eye level and peered through it. Spirits damn this fog! It was too murky to get a good sighting. These were not good sniping conditions.  
Still, as he looked, he became aware of movement.  
There it was! The unmistakeable shape of a Collector was coalescing in the mist. Dex didn't wait any longer. The eyes were the clearest part of the alien. Dex lined the sights on his Widow up on them, and pulled the trigger.  
The gun jolted back in his hands. The butt smacked into his shoulder. 'Shit,' he said.  
The round disappeared harmlessly off into the mist.  
'What was that, army boy?' Krondesh asked.  
'Seems the kick on this thing is more than I reckoned on,' Dex admitted.  
'Oh for fuck's sake,' the krogan griped. 'So your gun-envy got the better of you, did it?'  
'Oh do put a sock in it, reptile,' Dex said. He really wasn't in the mood right now. 'I very much doubt you could do any better.'  
'Oh wow,' Krondesh said. 'I think army boy's actually angry!'  
Dex looked back into the sightings. The Collector had rolled, alerted by the missed shot, and had vanished back into the mist. But there was movement. Something else was emerging.  
It was - a turian?  
'What in the name of the spirits?' Dex said, half to himself.  
'What is it?' Krondesh asked.  
'There's another turian out there!' Dex remembered that Kat and Karrean had been focusing closely on turians and krogan recently. Could it be that he was looking at another escaped prisoner, like the Finch? What had they been through, trapped down here in this hell? How long had they been here? Had they been canned up in a pod too?  
But something was nagging at him.  
'Wait,' Dex said. The shape was becoming clearer. The turian's shape was a bit off, wrong somehow. And - 'Why would a captive have a gun?'  
'What?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex's stomach turned to ice. The turian wasn't a turian. The plates of the headcrest were wrong, too long and spindly, and too few in number. The body had metal plates bolted to it in strange places. There was what looked like exposed muscle tissue in places! And the face had too many eyes, and little blue lights.  
'Oh fuck,' Dex said. 'We've got a new type of Collector monster inbound. Looks a bit like a turian - but I don't think it is.'  
The cyborg thing was carrying a gun. It looked like one of the Collectors' weird assault rifles. Dex's readouts told him that the thing had a kinetic barrier as well.  
More movement in the mist caught his eye. Several more of the things were approaching.  
'Get ready,' Dex said. 'We'll be fighting imminently.'  
'So we're getting to shoot turians as well?' Krondesh said. For a moment the old, not-angry krogan was back. 'As well as Collectors who really have it coming? Is this actually my hatching day or something?'  
'Just try not to shoot me as well,' Dex said.  
The Finch had moved over and was peering at his wrist display. 'What the hell is that?' she asked. 'Some sort of turian Husk?'  
Dex looked up. 'Finch,' he said, 'get back on post. Now.' Then he remembered that she wasn't any sort of soldier. 'Please.'  
She looked at him, then shuffled away.  
'How did they get behind us?' Narack asked.  
Dex had been wondering that himself. He heard a rustling noise. Movement caught at the corner of his eye.  
The Finch said, 'Uh, guys? We have incoming! Behind us!'  
Dex looked over his shoulder. 'I don't believe it,' he said.  
'Well there's your answer, four eyes,' Krondesh said to Narack. 'The buggy bastards can fly. I guess they must have flown in and dropped the turian Husks things behind us - and we didn't see them because of the mist!'  
Behind them, several Collectors were dropping down through the mist. They had wings extending from their backs!  
The Finch said, 'No way. Those wings are too small. They couldn't generate enough lift, even under this gravity.'  
'The bugs disagree,' Krondesh told her.  
'It's not disagreement, it's fucking physics!'  
'What are you going to believe, some textbook or your own eyes?'  
'Biotics?' Narack suggested. 'Some sort of mass field? If their bodies were lighter, could there be enough lift then?'  
Dex barked, 'This is NOT the time for a science argument! They're about to land - fucking start shooting! NOW!'  
The droning beat of the wings stopped.  
'What do we do?' the Finch asked. She sounded a little panicky.  
'Focus on the Collectors,' Dex said. 'I'll worry about the husked turians. Or whatever the fuck they are.'  
He quickly tapped a very familiar instruction set, sending the data to his drone. From beyond the end of the pipe rack, a flickering orange light gleamed out into the fog. With it came the hiss-crackle of flames. There was also an abrupt, electronic-sounding wail that rose and cut off as soon as it began.  
'One bird husk cooked, then,' Krondesh said.  
'Quite,' Dex agreed. 'Though they know my drone is there now.' He moved to the end of the pipe rack and lifted his Widow. 'Now, you lot, Collectors. Attack them! Now!'  
He heard Krondesh say, 'Narack! The one at the front! I'll drop a Warp field on him! Charge that one.'  
'Got it,' Dex heard Narack say. A moment later Dex heard the familiar crackle of Krondesh's Warp blast as it discharged. An instant later there was a boom as Narack charged.  
Gunfire erupted around them.  
This was a mess. Collectors approaching from the rear, other attackers from the front. Dex realised the team had been led into a very neat ambush, but it wasn't quite the set-up he'd been expecting. He'd naively assumed that all attacks would come from the front.  
A round sparked off of the pipework not far from Dex's head. He resisted the urge to shudder. He needed to focus on his own shooting if the team was to get through this. He'd just have to hope that the others kept the Collectors busy enough not to pick him off while they were attacking.  
He put one foot right up against the edge of the pipe rack and he crouched down. Putting his weight on that foot, he leaned forward, around the edge of the cover. This way, if anything took a potshot at him, all he needed to do was push back on that foot and he could roll back into full cover.  
The first turian husk thing had been toasted into non-existence. Dex allowed himself a brief moment of speculation about what it was, or had been - had one of the Golden Syringe's turian customers been put on some sort of dragon's tooth? Was the resemblance pure coincidence? Was he looking at the product of some sort of other Collector biotechnology horror? The speculation was useless right now, however, so he shut it down.  
He counted two other turian husks. The blue lights made them easier to see amongst the mist. Briefly he wondered why they didn't just turn those lights off. It seemed like a tactical error. Was there some other, more subtle point to them? But this too was a useless speculation, so he shut it down. He needed to focus.  
The other two turian husks had been slowed down by his drone. They were now carefully staying out of the way of the flamethrower, but the drone was harrying them with its on-board gun. The drone's power reserves were close to exhausted. It had caught some fire and its barriers were failing. It wouldn't last much longer. Dex considered dropping a grenade into the turian husks, but he only had a few. Best to ration them, he thought.  
Behind him he heard more gunfire, and a krogan roaring. For a moment his shadow was outlined onto the floor by a strobe of light. The hiss-whoosh of flame confirmed that one of the Finch's incendiary charges had found its mark.  
Dex lined up his Widow again. There was one of the turian husk things, taking aim at his drone. For the moment, the creature was sideways to him. It gave Dex a chance. He had the creature's head in the sight. He pulled on the trigger.  
This time he was prepared. He had the Widow braced against one shoulder and had moved a foot backwards on the ground, to better absorb the recoil. Still the gun's kick was vicious.  
The turian husk's head disappeared.  
A decapitated corpse flopped the ground amidst a rain of meat. Dex nodded to himself. That had been a decent shot. Quickly he looked for the remaining attacker. There it was! The Widow could take three shots per thermal clip, and Dex had used two, so he could take one more before he needed to change the clip.  
'Better not miss this one,' he muttered to himself.  
He had the thing in his sights now. He tugged back the trigger -  
One more headless thing dropped to the ground.  
At that moment his drone finally gave up the ghost, expending the last of its power to auto-destruct. It exploded. A shower of charred dust rained down onto the ground.  
Moving automatically, the turian quickly snapped out the expended clip and replaced it with one from one of his pouches. Years of practise made the gestures instinctive. He took the expended thermal clip and tossed it away into the fog. Its sullen red glow vanished into the murk. Perhaps some careless Collector minion would step on it and burn their foot.  
Dex turned his attention to the fight behind him.  
Krondesh had just dispatched a Collector with the omni-blade on his Claymore. Another Collector tried to rush him with a knife, only to have its torso blown apart by the Claymore. Dex blinked. That gun was impressively vicious.  
There was a boom of displaced air and a crack of bodies colliding as Narack charged two Collectors. One of them fell to the floor, bones evidently shattered and quite dead. The other was sent spinning through the air, landing with a sickening thud several feet away. Narack never gave the Collector a chance to get up again, hitting it with a wave of gunfire.  
The Finch was holding back and dropping overloads and incendiaries on enemies as needed. She was laying prone on the floor with her omnitool out, clearly trying to present as small a target as possible.  
Dex was pleased to see that the team seemed to be synergising well. No-one appeared to be injured and enemies were going down all around them. In fact the sound of gunfire was sharply diminishing and there seemed to be fewer attackers.  
A moment later and silence fell over the area.  
'Well,' Dex said, 'that seems to be one lot dealt with. Well done, everyone.'  
The Finch looked a bit unsteady, but she got to her feet without help. 'That ... that was intense!' she said.  
'We need to move forward,' Dex said. 'Let's not give them any chance to regroup.'  
'Where do we go?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex looked at the Finch. 'Those IR sources you mentioned,' he said. 'It seems likely that whatever the centre of this place is, it will have the heaviest network activity. So they might be in it. Can you get a fix on where they are?'  
'I can try,' she said. 'I have the logs on the signal strengths for each beacon. And we've moved some distance since I took the first set of readings.' She was looking at her omnitool, a thoughtful tone now in her voice. 'Let's see if we can do a power-on-arrival analysis on the signals.'  
'What would that tell us?' Krondesh asked.  
'The closer you are to the source of the signal, the stronger its power,' she said without looking up. 'That's the inverse square law for you. If a source gets stronger, you're moving toward it. And if you have several sources, you can see how they vary as you move. And use that to do some triangulation.' As she spoke keys were being tapped. 'And ... hello, what have we here?'  
'What have you found?' Dex asked.  
She looked up. 'The sources are in a cluster that way.' She pointed ahead of them. 'As best I can tell we're about a hundred metres away.'  
The mist was too thick to see what was in that direction. Dex was starting to suspect that the mistiness might not be an accident. It was too convenient for the defenders down here in the room.  
'We go there, then,' Dex said. 'If Narack's troops are still alive, we'll find them near there.'  
'Well we'd better move, then,' Narack said, sounding impatient.  
They formed up again with Dex and the Finch at the back and Narack and Krondesh in front. Dex had the group space out as much as was practical, so they couldn't be taken out by a single grenade of explosive. However the fog limited their dispersal - Dex did not want anyone out of visual range.  
They started moving. They passed amongst various collections of alien machinery, half-shadowed amongst the omnipresent fog. The whole environment had an eerie, funereal feel to it. Dex felt like he was tresspassing in a bizarre high-tech graveyard.  
They had covered about half the distance when the Finch sounded the alarm. 'Uh, Dex?' she said.  
'What?'  
'There's another spike in node activity,' she said. 'Like the one that happened just before we were attacked last time.'  
Dex tensed. 'Everyone - be on your guard! Keep moving for now, but be ready to duck into cover.'  
'I don't know that they're connected,' the Finch added, sounding uncertain, 'but I figured I should say.'  
'That was a good call,' Dex said. 'Oh and everyone - watch the sky as well!'  
He was determined not to be surprised twice by aerial Collectors.  
They were just coming up on a long bank of cables, pipes and junctions. The miscellaneous tubes were held in place by a row of framework pylons, rising about three metres up from the ground. Dex caught a glimpse of movement behind it.  
'Wait,' he said. 'There's something there!'  
A massive, hulking shape shambled out from behind the end of the array.  
'What the fuck,' Krondesh said, 'is that?'  
Its outline was roughly humanoid. The head sat atop its thickset shoulders looked somewhat human. But it had legs like tree-trunks, two arms haning from one side of its body and a fat, merged arm on the other.  
'Is that a face? In its shoulder?' the Finch sounded appalled.  
'It's got a mouth in its stomach,' Narack said.  
The monstrosity had, too. Dex stared, horrified. The things they'd run into before appeared to be re-purposed organics of variouus sorts, but this thing appeared to be several bodies that had been partly-merged together. It was foul, a freakish scion of some creepy alien science.  
It was raising the heavy, merged arm.  
Dex caught a glimpse of a shiny, metallic maw where the palm of the hand should be.  
'Shit!' he said. 'That arm is a gun!'  
The thing fired.  
A powerful blast of energy smacked square into Dex's shields. His barriers collapsed, unbelievably fast. Instinctively, Dex was throwing himself in a roll. That roll saved his life. The second blast passed just above his head and vanished off into the roiled fog.  
The next blast was aimed at the Finch. As Dex rolled back to his feet, he saw she had her omnitool out and was about to shoot it with the incendiaries. It fired first.  
The blast hit her square on. She was flipped backwards, head over heels, like a rag doll. Dex saw her tech armour collapse, then her kinetic barriers flare and spark out. Then she hit the floor. What the fuck was that gun firing? Whatever it was, it was powerful.  
Mercifully, the Finch flopped to one side and struggled back to her feet. She was apparently uninjured, although obviously a bit stunned.  
Dex turned back toward the monster, raising his Widow -  
To stare straight down the barrel of the monster's gun. He thought, oh no, as a glow of light appeared deep inside it -  
With a roar, Krondesh threw a Warp ball at the thing. Hissing, seething biotic energy rippled out across the monster's hide.  
There was a flash and a bang as Narack charged it.  
Two biotic fields collided, merged and exploded. A detonation ripped out. Dex breathed a sigh of relief. That should be the end of the thing -  
But no it wasn't.  
Impossibly, it still stood! Even as a heat haze rippled around it, it still stood! And there was Narack, staggering to one side, clearly surprised by its survival.  
It smashed him with its arms, flailing away at him. Narack stumbled and lost his balance. The monster then raised its gun-arm, directly above him.  
'It's going to pound him!' Krondesh shouted.  
That arm looked bulky. There were massive muscles behind it. It would hit with a lot of force. Narack probably wouldn't survive a trauma like that.  
Acting instinctively, Dex sighted down the Widow. He had one shot at this and he had to get that shot right. He lined up the monster's head, square in the centre of his crosshairs. The monster's arm raised -  
The Widow kicked back against his shoulder.  
Dex was lucky. The Scion had been weakened by Krondesh's Warping, then weakened further by the biotic explosion, and the turian had an armour-piercing ammunition headshot lined up. The combination was just barely enough.  
Dex's round tore through the Scion's head.  
It died, with less fuss than it had lived. Its massive corpse slumped to the ground, smacking limply onto the rock. The heavy arm landed only inches from where Narack was.  
The batarian scrambled to his feet. 'Fuck,' he said. 'It almost had me!'  
Dex's readouts told him that his kinetic barriers were recharging. Thank the spirits for that - apparently the monster hadn't damaged the mechanism, at least!  
'Everyone, move out,' Dex barked, voice rough. 'We need to move even faster now. I do not want to run into another of those!'


	27. A Brutal Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The journey deeper into the room continues. Hints of purpose emerge, and monstrosities are encountered...

The density of machinery increased. The team's surroundings took on a confined, claustrophobic feel. The equipment around them now consisted large, organically-shaped units of no obvious purpose. These were interwoven with tangles of segmented cables. Enigmatic little blue lights glimmered here and there at the bottoms of trenches and gaps in the surface-plates of the machinery. Fog swirled through the narrow spaces.  
So far they had seen no sign of Narack's troops. That worried Dex. Something had to have happened to them. Given what the team had observed so far, it was hard to believe that there would be good news.  
The Finch also had a thought that she wanted to share. As they walked forward, she spoke to Dex via his earphones. 'Dex, I have an idea,' she said.  
'Go on.' Dex was currently armed with his assault rifle rather than his Widow - that was folded up and locked to the slot on his back. In these close confines, a sniper rifle would be less use than an assault rifle.  
'Every time we've been attacked, there's been an activity spike on the nodes,' she said. 'I'm really starting to think they're linked. Taking out the nodes might help us.'  
'Do you think they're part of the enemy's comms?' Dex asked.  
She sighed. 'It's possible. Or it could be like a GPS system. Or something else entirely. Either way it does seem to be something they need.'  
'What are the nodes doing right now?'  
'I'll just check my omnitool.' There was a pause. 'They're active, but only at their usual baseline level.'  
'Have you got a better fix on their positions?'  
'Yes,' she said. 'We're getting close, so the signals are stronger. That means a better lock on their locations. The first node is only twenty metres ahead of us.'  
'Straight ahead?'  
'Not quite. Closer to the one o'clock position.'  
That threw Dex for a moment. Fortunately, his training in the turian army had included human terminology. Turians didn't use analogue clocks, but he was familiar with the idea, so he was able to interpret what the Finch meant. 'Okay,' he said. 'We should be able to see it soon, then.'  
'I assume it will look like the things we found in the tunnel earlier,' the Finch said.  
'Seems reasonable,' Dex agreed. 'Do me a favour? Keep monitoring those comms. If the activity goes up, tell me straight away.'  
'Will do,' she said.  
Next up, Krondesh's voice spoke into Dex's ears. 'You know, after we're done with this, we're going to have Kat to deal with,' he said.  
Dex's mandibles moved. 'I'd almost forgotten about her,' he said.  
Krondesh said, 'Given what she's involved with here, I can't see any good case for letting her walk away from this.'  
Dex thought of the discovery in the laboratory further up. 'Yes,' he said. 'You're right. If she gets away she might do this again.'  
There was a pause. Then, Krondesh said, 'You seem unusually free of doubts, army boy.'  
Dex hadn't really thought about it that much. It occurred to him that the krogan's observation had some truth. 'I suppose I am,' he said. 'This feels like the sort of fight that's morally-justified. The Collectors are clearly doing real harm and do need stopping.'  
Krondesh said, 'You sound like you think this is new.'  
Dex considered that. 'There's been a lot of stuff recently that I haven't been happy about,' he admitted. 'Some of it probably couldn't have been avoided. Some of it, maybe it could have, but the choices needed were too far in the past to help when the situation arrived. Some of it I tried to avoid, but it didn't work. And going back in the past, I think some of the stuff I did in the Army was fine. I don't have any compunctions about all the slavers we shot in the Traverse.'  
'You still don't sound too sure.'  
'Well, it's more the case that back then, I wasn't even thinking about morality,' Dex said. 'I was a good turian back then. I had my orders and that was all I needed. But that doesn't seem to be enough now.'  
'For what it's worth,' Krondesh said, 'I think you're a better person now then you were then.' He paused, then added, 'I shan't speculate whether that's the same as being a better turian.'  
Dex snorted. Character testimonials from a krogan - whatever next?  
There was a faint sound from somewhere in the fog.  
'What was that?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex gestured for silence. He listened carefully.  
A faint clinking. A scraping noise. Like something big, dragging along the floor. Another clink. A grunt - or was it a snort? A faint thud, like a large foot hitting the ground. Dex took a breath. He smelt the familiar rubber and metal scent of the inside of his helmet.  
Another clink, this time louder.  
'It's closer,' Narack said.  
Inside his helmet, Dex rolled his eyes. So much for silence, then.  
'Sounds big,' Krondesh said.  
Dex glimpsed light in the mist. Two red glows, next to each other, like eyes. There was a sense of a large shape. A small head mounted on a long neck, sprouting from a bulbous, muscular body. It looked like no alien species Dex had ever seen, but some things about it were familiar. He frowned. The mist still obscured and softened its outlines. The little details of the shapes were still indistinct.  
Then the thing stepped into clear view.  
'Oh Jesus,' the Finch said. She sounded appalled.  
The thing was a monstrosity. The Husks and the not-turian had been bad but this was worse. The thing was a mass of muscles, metal plates, spines, the omnipresent little blue lights and also -  
'Is that a turian's head?' Krondesh asked.  
'Is it just me,' Narack began, 'or does the behind look a bit krogan?'  
Dex felt sick. The thing in front of them appeared to be some sort of freakish hybrid. In front of its body it held out a massive, partly-mechanical claw. Looking beyond the claw, though, both Narack and Krondesh were right. Dex said, 'This is an offence against nature.'  
'I don't understand,' the Finch said. 'This isn't even possible. The two species have distinct cellular chemistry. You couldn't even-'  
Apparently the brutal monstrosity disagreed about its impossibility. As if it felt insulted, it reared up on its stump-like hind legs and beat at its chest. Its clawed paws clanged on the metal plates over its torso.  
It roared.  
It dropped down.  
It charged.  
Dex had been subconsciously expecting something like this. His legs were already tensed. He rolled to the side. Even then it was close. The huge monster was preternaturally fast. It was on him in moments. The monster's clawed fist sailed through the space his head had occupied.  
The creature didn't pause. It jumped.  
Its aim was acute. Dex just managed to dodge the swing of the claw - but his roll connected him onto the other fist.  
A vice-like grip clenched around his waist. Dex actually heard the plates of his suit groan. He was lifted up into the air, limbs flailing uselessly.  
He realised he was about to be pounded down onto the ground, like the opposite of what had almost happened to Narack a few minutes ago. With the force behind these limbs, he wouldn't survive. They would crush him.  
With a sick feeling, Dex realised this was it. This was the check-out point. This was the situation where no choices led to survival. Useless thoughts spiralled through his brain, forking and branching. It had barely even been seconds but in a situation like this, time itself seemed suspended.  
The turian realised he was panicking.  
He was beating at the fist around his waist. Around those artificial metal digits, his kinetic barriers sparked and flared, electric discharges venting themselves without obvious effect.  
He could see what was going to happen. The monster would pound him to the ground to stun him. Probably the impact would crack his plates and shatter some of his bones. He'd be bleeding inside. But thanks to his armour, he'd probably still be alive. Then, once he was helpless and crippled, it would smash him, mercilessly and methodically with its limbs. This would be quick, but not quick enough. There was time enough for suffering.  
The imminent pain would be considerable.  
Dex suddenly thought of the Waypoint gang, during that random and senseless encounter. It seemed so long ago. He wondered if they'd all felt this sense of sick, helpless fear when it became apparent that the turian was going to kill them all.  
He felt the arm jerk in preparation -  
Then everything happened at once.  
He heard a krogan roar. There was a flash of bluish light that might have been a biotic discharge. There was a hiss and crackle of fire and electricity, and a smell of burning that made it past even the filters in his helmet. He saw the flickering orange light of a surge of fire, running over the monster's flank. With it was a bluish glow that might be a Warp field, chewing and tearing at the monster's plates. Dex saw blackened fragments of metal falling off, charred and damaged in the conflagration of energy.  
Then there was a flash of blue and a thunderclap of displaced air. Just for a moment, Dex saw Narack's form as the batarian rolled aside from his charge.  
Two biotic fields met, merged and collapsed. A pulse of confused and angry energy was released. A roar shot through the air and the ground shook. The beast stumbled and staggered.  
Its clawed paw spasmed.  
Impossibly, contrary to all the cold logic of war and violence, Dex was dropped. He had a moment to recognise the absurdity of his escape before the ground rushed up to meet him. Luckily, instinct took over. Whilst his conscious brain flailed, his body threw itself into a neat roll. Within moments Dex was away from the monster and back on his feet, Widow in hand.  
Behind him there were crackles and bangs. Flashes of light pulsed in the mist. A rattle of gunfire rang out.  
Dex shook his head, mandibles jerking. He turned around.  
The monster was wreathed in flame from the Finch's incendiaries and visibly-injured by the biotic explosion. Chunks of plating had been torn away from it, revealing bluish guts underneath. It roared in pain. It turned toward its new attackers, murder glowing in its mad eyes -  
And presented the side of its head to Dex.  
Other instincts snapped into place. Dex had only an instant to act, but he knew exactly what to do. The Widow came up. His eye presented itself to the scope. He took a sighting. He locked the gun against his shoulder, moving a foot back to brace himself on the rocky ground and tightened his hands on the weapon, holding it securely in place.  
The trigger fell back under his finger.  
A round tore out from the rifle. It closed the distance in an instant. It smashed through the monster's terrifyingly-turian head, pulverising the still-mostly-organic brain inside.  
The monster collapsed.  
'Shit,' Dex croaked.  
It jerked as it died, that vast mechanical claw sweeping through the air. Luckily no-one was within reach when it did. The claw crunched down to the ground next to the monster.  
'What in the name of holy God,' the Finch's voice said, 'is that thing?'  
'Was,' Krondesh said. 'Past tense. The operative word is "was".' The krogan was quibbling over language, but he sounded shaken.  
'Turian?' Narack said. 'Are you all right?'  
Dex shook his head to clear it. He realised Narack meant him. For a moment he thought that the batarian had meant the frighteningly-familiar head that had been appended to this hybrid barbarity. 'I - I'm all right,' he said. 'Umm, guys? Thanks. I really did think that thing had me, for a moment there.' He paused, then added, 'That was a nice bit of co-ordination with the biotics and the tech stuff. Well done.'  
'Teamwork wins the day,' Krondesh said, sounding cynical. 'What, are we a cheesy motivational poster now?'  
The krogan was grousing, which presumably meant he was okay. Dex felt a hysterical laugh trying to fight its way up from inside him. He managed to swallow it back. He focused on his breathing, trying to slow it down to something calmer and steadier.  
'Okay,' Dex said, 'that was pretty fucking close. Next time anyone sees red eyes in the mist - shout to the rest of us, and start shooting!'  
'Understood,' the Finch said. She sounded shaken too. Then she walked up the huge corpse, and squatted down next to it. Her helmet moved as she looked it over. Her omnitool blinked into life. She ran it over the carcass, taking some quick readings. 'Fucking unbelievable. Absolutely fucking unbelievable.'  
'What is it?' Dex asked.  
'The blood,' she said. 'It's registering as both turian and krogan hormonal signatures. This thing really is some sort of hybrid.'  
Krondesh appeared next to her. 'I thought we were chemically-different,' he said.  
The Finch was clearly only half-listening. 'The word you're looking for is chirality,' she said, sounding distracted. 'Levo proteins twist one way, dextro proteins the other. Put them together and they can't do anything useful. Non-compatible. You can't eat each other’s food - or you can, you can chew it up and swallow it, but your stomach can't digest it.'  
'And yet this thing is ... made ... out of both of us,' Krondesh said.  
'Apparently the Collectors have found a way around the incompatibility,' the Finch said. 'This is both sickening and fascinating at the same time.'  
Krondesh was looking at the remains of the skull. 'Is it just me or are there electronic bits in there?' he asked.  
'It's another cyborg,' she said. 'But that seems to be standard for Collector biotech. But what I just don't get is, why?'  
'Why?'  
'Why do all this?' She sounded frustrated. 'This thing's clearly at least partly a terror weapon. And it's an inefficient one too.'  
Krondesh looked up at Dex. 'I think army boy might disagree,' he said. 'For a moment there, the beast had him.'  
Dex, however, was shaking his head. 'No,' he said. 'She's right.'  
Krondesh seemed surprised. 'Really?'  
'Look,' Dex said. 'This thing apparently has no ranged attacks. No drones, no artillery, no guns. It's only really good for charging infantry at close quarters. If you had any kind of fire support - gunships, mortars, attack drones, whatever, you'd shoot it off the battlefield before it got anywhere near your troops. Look, the thing's a hulking great big monstrosity - which also means it's a nice big target! It was effective against us because we just weren't expecting it. Even then, we were still able to take it down. The point I'm making is, from a military point of view, this thing isn't much use.'  
Krondesh considered that. 'But,' he said, 'what if we got swarmed by a load of Husks - then one of these things turned up?'  
Dex thought about that. 'Yeah,' he said with some reluctance. 'I could see that approach being more effective.'  
Narack said, ‘You know, if you got caught between a swarm of Husks and one of these things, that could be nasty. Really all you could do would be hope you could run out through a gap.’  
‘You almost make it sound like it’s really designed to herd people,’ the Finch said.  
‘Well,’ Narack said, glancing at Dex, ‘people without air support or proper guns, I mean. So not us. Or anyone like us.’  
Krondesh said, ‘But, you know who that does describe? Almost every civilian, that’s who.’  
Dex felt a cold tingling run down his spine. He looked at the gigantic carcass. ‘Who would need to herd civilians?’ he heard himself ask. ‘And – why?’  
‘Does anyone else get the feeling,’ the Finch asked, ‘that we’re out of our depth here? Whatever it is that’s really going on here, it’s fucked up.’  
‘What direction did that beast come from?’ Narack asked.  
Krondesh pointed ahead of them. ‘That way, I think.’  
‘That’s the direction we’re headed in,’ the Finch said.  
‘Evidently they don’t want us to go there,’ Dex said. ‘Narack, if your troops are still alive, that’s where they’ll be.’


	28. Objectives and Devices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The room's purpose is fully-apprehended. Horrors are met (and shot at, sometimes even successfully). The importance of networking is made clear. Then it is time to make a swift exit...

They found the first of the communications nodes a few minutes later. It looked exactly like the one they had seen in the tunnels earlier. A squat, stubby cylinder with short antennae jutting from its end, it was mounted halfway up the side of one of the machines.  
The Finch eyed it. 'Now there's a suspicious-looking carbuncle,' she said.  
Krondesh said, 'What would happen if we just shot it or something?'  
The Finch said, 'They lose a comms node - and they know which, so they know where we are.'  
'Human,' Narack said, 'they already know we're here.'  
Dex said, 'If they're using these to route their comms ... do you think taking it out would hurt them?'  
The Finch said, 'At a guess, if one node went down, they'd re-route the signals through the others.'  
'But if all the nodes were down, they couldn't do that.'  
The Finch said, 'I could probably shut the node down with a modified overload pulse. Fry something inside it, so it stops working. But I don't know their networking protocols. I can't hack them and I can't send any kind of remote shutdown command.' She eyed Dex. 'Unless your bag of ex-military tricks has anything that could?'  
Dex shook his head. 'My hacking tools all assume a standard VI setup.'  
'What I'm saying is, if you want me cracking Collector nodes, I have to physically walk up to them first,' the Finch said. 'I can take each down, but I'll be busy for at least a minute or so while I do. So you'll all need to cover me. Is that an efficient use of our resources?'  
Dex said, 'When we're done here, we'll need to escape. Knocking out their comms now will make that easier. Somehow I don't think the Collectors are just going to let us walk back out.'  
A moment's silence descended as the team digested that remark.  
'How are we for thermal clips?' Krondesh asked.  
Everyone quickly set to checking their pouches. Fortunately, it emerged that the clip situation was okay for now.  
The Finch sighed. 'Jesus but these clips are annoying,' she said. 'So bloody fiddly.'  
Dex said, 'Yeah but having a gun that was constantly peeping at you from continual overheating wasn't much fun either.'  
Krondesh said, 'Well, army boy, you could try actually hitting some of your targets. Instead of just hosing down the general area with rounds, I mean.'  
'I can think of something else that could do with a hosing down,' Dex said. He looked around. The mist swirled around them but he saw no sign of movement within it. 'All right, if you can, take down this node. The rest of us will cover you.'  
The Finch got to work. She started by applying a smear of incendiary gel to the side of the node. The gel burnt with a satisfying roar and a flash of fire, but surprisingly, the node was undamaged. There was a smear of carbonisation along one side and a rippling heathaze hanging above the metal, but there was no evidence of any decline in functionality.  
'Damn,' the Finch said. 'That's unexpected. Apparently they're resistant to heat.'  
'Designed for use in space, maybe?' Dex suggested.  
'I guess it must be something like that,' she said. 'Let me try hitting it with an overload.'  
Her omnitool discharged a crackle of electricity. It sparked over the node. The lights flickered for a moment, then steadied.  
'That didn't look effective,' Krondesh said.  
'The lights blinked,' Narack said.  
The Finch sounded annoyed. 'Well, these things are damnably robust.'  
'Would shooting it work?' Krondesh asked.  
She ran her omnitool over it. 'No guarantees. The shell is too thick. It might just bounce off.'  
'Their nodes are tougher than their troops,' Dex said.  
'Apparently the Collectors take wireless networking seriously,' the Finch said, sounding puzzled. 'Very seriously, it would seem.'  
'It's no more bizarre than anything else here,' Krondesh offered.  
'Let me have another go with the overloads,' the Finch said. 'There definitely was an effect there, even if it wasn't enough. Perhaps if I tweak the pulse a bit, I can get more of the current across the shell.' She attended to her omnitool, muttering under her breath.  
Dex arranged the team around the Finch, everyone aiming outwards. While she worked, they waited.  
The Finch tapped some keys on her omnitool, muttering under her breath. There was a crackle and a scent of ozone. Electricity crawled over the node's body.  
The lights died.  
'Yes!' she said.  
'Is it ... dead?' Dex asked.  
She nodded. 'It is indeed.' She sounded pleased with herself. 'And there's changes in activity across the other nodes. I'm seeing lots of spikes and choppiness. Looks like taking one down has hurt them.'  
Dex felt a moment's satisfaction. 'Good. Which way is the next one?'  
The Finch pointed. 'Best as I can tell, the next nearest one is over there.'  
Dex nodded. 'Okay. Let's get moving. Same grouping as before - Krondesh, Narack, you're in front. Finch, I want you in the middle. I'll cover the rear.'  
The second node passed without interruption. Dex was both pleased and uneasy. On the one hand, the team had killed a lot of enemies already, so perhaps the supply was run down? On the other hand, what if there were more and they were using this time to regroup?  
The Finch was attending to the third note when Dex became aware of a noise.  
'Anyone else hear that buzzing?' he asked. He looked around, but the spirits-damned mist was still obstructing his vision.  
Krondesh said, 'I hear it.' The krogan sounded alert and focused.  
Narack sounded puzzled. 'I can't hear - wait, is that it?'  
Three swarms erupted from the mist.  
They were buzzing, seething masses of small robotic insects. They were more of the same things the team had met in the corridor to the laboratory above. Dex had just a moment to reach for one of his drones and throw it before the swarms arrived.  
A swarm descended on him.  
Once more, it enveloped him and exploded. Dex's shields flared. His ears rang. He was knocked down. The ground came up. He rolled, dazed, head ringing.  
He managed to keep hold of his Widow, thank the spirits. As he struggled to his feet he saw that his shields were depleted. The swarm had dropped a lot of energy onto them when it detonated.  
He could hear Krondesh roaring and Narack swearing. They'd been swarmed too.  
'Get to cover!' Dex barked. 'They'll attack-'  
He didn't get to finish his sentence.  
Collector gunfire erupted from the mist. Rattling hisses filled the air around them. Dex dropped into another roll. A quick scan of his surrounds revealed a fat alien plinth nearby. It was made of dark metal and a thatch of cables sprouted from its sides.  
Dex rolled into cover behind it.  
More rounds roared overhead.  
The Collectors were charging them. Insectile shapes, running from the mist.  
Krondesh roared. A Warp blast flashed out into the mist. A moment later, there was a boom of sound and a flash of biotic energy as Narack charged. Dex saw two Collectors go tumbling through the air.  
They were chased by the rattle-bark of the batarian's Punisher.  
Krondesh ran toward the nearest Collector. His Claymore erupted. The Collector took the shot full in the chest. The bug disintegrated in a spray of ichor.  
The team were being attacked from one side again. Dex frowned. Better check on their flank -  
Then he remembered something.  
'Everyone - watch the skies!'  
Collectors could fly.  
Even as Dex barked the order, there was a sighing beat of descending wings. Four Collectors dropped out of the mist, from above, straight behind the Finch.  
Shit.  
Worse yet, one of the Collectors was a new type. It was covered with a bright, flickering biotic corona. It was like looking into a fire. Dex frowned. He'd seen this before somewhere -  
Then he remembered the video footage at Kat's office, back when he'd first met Krondesh. It hadn't been that long, but it seemed like an age now. He remembered the footage of Karrean meeting a Collector with glowing effects like this one's.  
He quickly brought up his Black Widow. One shot barked out. The first of the four Collectors dropped to a headshot. Even as Dex sighted on the next one, a thought occurred to him. There were four of them on the Finch and he had three shots.  
Oh crap.  
'Krondesh! Narack! Get back here!' Dex barked more orders into his microphone. He hoped the two of them were listening.  
It had only been moments. His Black Widow kicked again. A Collector dropped.  
The glowing one was almost on the Finch. She apparently hadn't noticed - she was absorbed in her work.  
Dex shot it in the head.  
It staggered, but somehow remained standing!  
'Oh no way,' Dex swore. 'That was a spirit-fucking headshot!'  
The thing's barrier was flaring. A barrier that could handle the punch of a Black Widow shot? What horror was this?  
The clip in is Black Widow was glowing bright red. It was exhausted.  
This close to the Finch, Dex couldn't risk dropping a grenade on the Collector. He realised there just wasn't time to change the dead thermal clip. He dropped the Widow - it clanged onto the ground. He winced, but he knew the gun was robust enough to take the punishment.  
He yanked his Mattock up over his shoulder, into his hands. The gun unfolded in one smooth move. He brought it up.  
The glowing Collector had produced a knife from somewhere and was about to bring it down on the Finch. All Dex's headshot had done was slow it down! Dex took a moment to be surprised by this - he'd shot it in the head, and it was ignoring him!  
'Ignore this,' he muttered.  
The Mattock spoke. A series of mass rounds ripped into the glowing Collector. Bug-juice spurted from its side. It shuddered and collapsed. The glowing barrier crackled and faded out.  
'Got you,' Dex said with satisfaction.  
The Finch didn't even look up. She was clearly absorbed in her work.  
There was one Collector left. It was turning toward Dex. He raised the assault rifle-  
The Collector jerked. An eruption of light washed over its body. Dex felt an electric tingling pass across him, like the discharge near a powerful biotic field.  
Its body lifted off of the ground. For a moment it hung there, then it dropped down. It looked just like the one Dex had just shot. He stared, wondering what the hell was going on.  
Then it spoke. 'We are Harbinger.'  
Dex had no idea what it meant by that. 'Like hell you are,' he muttered, raising his Mattock -  
The Harbinger Collector gestured, and a seething ball of biotic energy flared out from its hands. Dex actually felt gravity lurch and shift as the ball fell toward him.  
Explosion.  
Motion.  
Falling.  
Light, pain, sound.  
He realised he was on the ground, gasping for breath. He could feel little twists of biotic energy playing over him - and through him! Each breath fired off traceries of pain through his body, as if the biotic energies were trying to eat him from the inside. He tried to roll to one side. He failed. Everything hurt.  
He gasped.  
The Harbinger Collector walked up to him. 'You trespass,' it said. 'You will know pain-'  
Then its head exploded.  
'Oh please do shut up, bugface,' said the Finch.  
She was stood immediately behind it, holding out her Carnifex. One neatly-aimed headshot, which had torn straight through the Collector's exoskeletal skull and had smashed its braincase apart.  
'Shit,' Dex croaked.  
Little streamers of biotic energy were coiling across his body, spitting and crackling and glowing fitfully with a greenish light. But even as he saw them, Dex also saw that they were fading out. He felt the pains recede from inside of him. Apparently without the Collector's will to animate them, the energy fields were losing coherence. They dissipated without doing any further harm.  
Dex was somewhat winded and he knew he had some fresh bruises under his suit. But, he got to his feet without further incident. He retrieved his guns - they'd fallen on the floor next to him.  
'What the fuck,' the Finch asked, 'was that?'  
Dex glanced at the Collector's carcass, and nudged it with a boot. It was definitely dead. 'Honestly,' he said, 'I'm damned if I know. But thanks for the rescue there.'  
She nodded. 'Don't mention it.' She looked at the body. 'It - spoke, didn't it?'  
' "We are Harbinger",' Dex quoted. 'Whatever that means.'  
The Finch frowned. 'Talking about yourself in the plural. Weird.'  
Dex said, 'There were two of them. I don't understand what I saw. But after I shot the first fiery bug, another one became fiery too.'  
The Finch looked at the node behind her. 'I must have missed that,' she said. She sighed. 'I was a bit busy with the comms node, though.'  
'Is it ... down?'  
She nodded. 'One left to do.'  
Dex noticed that the sounds of gunfire and krogan roaring had died down. A moment later, Krondesh lumbered out of the mist. His armour was splattered with the remnants of various misfortunate Collectors and there was a heathaze dancing over the barrel of his Claymore. The gun had clearly seen a lot of use.  
Krondesh took in the scene in front of him. 'Looks like I missed all the fun,' he said.  
'You missed some weirdness,' Dex said. 'I don't know if I'd call it fun.'  
'The turian needed a bit of help,' the Finch explained with a shrug.  
'Frankly,' Dex said, 'that was an impressive bit of shooting. You took that Collector down good and hard.'  
Krondesh looked at the Finch. He said, 'Pistol sniping? Evidently you're spending too much time around army boy here.'  
At that moment Narack reappeared. He was slotting a new thermal clip into his Punisher. 'We seem to be free of them for the moment,' he reported.  
'Time for the last node, then,' Dex said.  
The Finch pointed. 'It's over that way.'  
They started out again.  
The route to the next node was a short but tense walk through the mist. As they walked, their surroundings changed. They found themselves inside a new arena of horror.  
The node was in the centre of a ring of slab-like tables. The tops were smooth, but they had drainage channels edged around their sides. Cables and mechanical arms sprouted from them. The arms were topped with what appeared to be surgical implements of all sorts.  
The tables were splattered discoloured patches. It wasn’t clear what had made the discolourations, but the implications were hardly appealing.  
'Knives, scalpels, saws and whatever the fuck this is,' Krondesh said, peering closely at one of them. 'Either this is a mad salarian doctor's wet dream, or we've found more fucked-up-ness.'  
'My money's on fucked-up-ness,' Narack said.  
The machinery here was dormant but alive. Little blue lights glimmered and blinked. Cables and modules hummed. The air was filled with a quiet but insistent thrum of electrics, awaiting the call to activity.  
'Bloodstains,' Dex said. He pointed. ‘No question about it. Those are bloodstains.’  
The tables in front of them had evidently been used. From the colour and freshness of the stains, the use appeared to be recent.  
'Oh my God,' the Finch said, sounding a bit sick. She raised a hand, pointing. The hand shook a little.  
There was a bigger table further ahead of them. Two partly-fused bodies lay dead upon it. Both were batarian. Their legs had been merged together into two brownish, stump-like limbs. Their upper bodies were still partly-separate. Some complicated-looking cybernetics had been partly-grafted into one of their arms. Their exposed torsos were crisscrossed with incisions.  
'Shit,' Narack said, sounding sick.  
'Your troops?' Krondesh asked.  
Narack nodded. The gesture was convulsive.  
'Shit,' the Finch repeated.  
'Any idea what this is?' Dex asked her. 'You are our resident scientific expert, after all.'  
'For God's sake,' she said. 'I was an astronomer, not a biologist!'  
'You've worked with Collector tech,' Dex pointed out. 'I think we can assume by now that those things at that Noverian lab of yours weren't geth. Or at least, they weren't all geth-derived.'  
The Finch shuddered. Her posture radiated horror at the scene in front of them. She swallowed, then managed to get a hold of herself. 'It - it looks like another cyborg experiment,' she said. 'It's a guess, but I think that's what this place might be. We're in some sort of cyborg biotech laboratory. They're running experiments here, on - on us, basically.'  
Narack looked at her. 'I don't see any humans on that table,' he said.  
She said, 'Something tells me they wouldn't treat us any differently. Anyway, all those Husks we ran into earlier looked kind of human. Or like they had been human, at some point.'  
'So Karrean's need for krogan and turian slaves,' Krondesh said, 'was related to - this?'  
Dex nodded slowly. 'I did find that odd, back when we had that first meeting with Kat,' he said. 'Why krogan and turians? We're not exactly an obvious mix.'  
'But if you're trying to make monsters like that hybrid thing we ran into earlier,' Krondesh said, 'then I guess you need a lot of birds and lizards. I mean, doesn't R&D involve a lot of trial and error? You won't get your project right the first time, after all.'  
Narack was still staring at the table. The diffuse lights gleamed off of the Blue Suns symbol on his chestplate. 'But why use my troops?' he said. 'This is just fucked up.'  
'I'm going to take a guess,' Dex said. 'It seems the Collectors have control over Kat, somehow. And they've worked out that her plans for Omega are holed below the waterline. So your troops may have been the last group of batarians they could get their hands on. For a while, anyway. If they were close to success on something, and needed just a few more, then it might make a certain sort of sense.'  
Narack and the Finch shuddered together. 'This makes sense?' the batarian demanded. 'It's horrible!'  
The Finch said, 'Dex, I can see that you're a turian. I don't think anyone else could be quite so cold-blooded about this.'  
'Except maybe a salarian,' Krondesh put in. He paused, then reconsidered. 'Actually, to be honest, I think this sort of demented butcher's shop might be a bit much even for them.'  
'I didn't say that I like any of this,' Dex said. 'I was just observing that there does seem to be a purpose here. It's awful, but there's structure to the monstrosity.'  
'I think we need to do something about this,' the Finch said.  
Dex nodded. 'All right. We find that node and kill it. Then, I'm going to rig a couple of my grenades as mines. Hopefully we should be able to do this area some substantial damage. If we can put it out of operation, that should shut it down.'  
The Finch looked around. 'The node is over there,' she said, pointing.  
The stubby form of the comms node was set amongst a complicated next of pipes, cables and struts. They were flanked on either side by a line of fat, two-metre high cylinders. The cylinders were mounted in a framework of organic-looking machinery. More cables and pipes threaded the assemblage.  
Dex walked up to one and looked inside. The cylinder was part-filled with a murky fluid. There was something in it. The cylinder was unlit, so it was hard to tell, but-  
'Oh shit,' he said, flinching backwards.  
'What is it?' Krondesh asked.  
'It's a partly-transformed turian,' Dex said.  
He shouldn't have been surprised. He'd known that Karrean, Kat and the Collectors had an interest in turian slaves. He'd seen the mechanised post-turians earlier. They'd all seen the dead krogan hatchlings upstairs. It should have occurred to him that something like this might have been here. But he hadn't quite made the connection on a subconscious level.  
Nonetheless, inside the tank was what was left of a turian. There was still some flakes of colony paint on what remained of his face. The body was part-natural, part mechanical and part decomposed. It was clear that the cyborging had not been a success. The fluid in the tank must have been some kind of suspension medium, or a nutrient fluid. It was stained bluish with turian blood. Apparently too many incisions had been made in the body, or they'd been made in the wrong places, or the mechanical properties of the cybernetics had been wrong and they'd torn the turian's flesh. Whatever the cause, there had apparently been bleeding before the end, and quite a lot of it.  
Dex shuddered.  
Krondesh appeared beside him. The krogan considered the scene. Quietly, he said, 'Doesn't look like it was quick, does it?'  
Dex shook his head. 'No.'  
'All right.’  
'So,' the Finch said, 'we're in a factory for monsters.' She shuddered. 'And I nearly ended up here. Jesus Christ.'  
Dex could see that everyone was rattled by the place. For his part, he didn't like any of what he was seeing either. Still, they needed to keep their focus. One thing he'd learned in the turian army was that having a concrete task to work on definitely helped in these sorts of situations.  
'Finch,' he said. 'If you could have a look at shutting down that node, that would be good. Narack, Krondesh - I need you to keep watch on either side of her. I don't mind which side.' He palmed a drone - his last drone, he realised. 'I'll just set this up.' He thumbed a key on the drone and tossed it out into the mist. He heard the whine of its little eezo motor as it came to life.  
The others were moving into position. He caught a glimmer of light as the Finch's omnitool activated. She was now at the drone and starting to mutter to herself. That meant she was busy. Good.  
Dex checked his displays. There was nothing showing yet - out where it was in the mist, the drone's cameras were recording nothing but more mist. The swirling was hypnotic. Dex tried not to be lulled by it. He listened for any sounds, but nothing reached his ears.  
Narack said, 'We haven't seen all of my troops. Those are - were - definitely Crenik and Shrent, but there were others.'  
'Did you know them well?' Dex asked.  
Narack shook his head. 'Crenik and Shrent were recent hires. I gather Shrent was actually a Trefak loyalist - so fuck only knows what she was doing out here.'  
'Sounds awkward,' Dex said.  
'Not really. I just didn't socialise with them. And politics didn't really come up at work. As for Crenik, I barely knew him. He was pretty taciturn. Never a spare word.'  
'If we run into the others,' Dex said, 'there's a chance they'll be like that. Is that likely to be a problem?'  
Narack's helmet rotated toward the table for a moment, then turned back. 'Frankly, whatever was being made there ... If that was done to me, I'd want someone to put me out of my misery. Assuming there was even anything left of me inside that compound skull.'  
Dex nodded. In some ways, Narack had a surprisingly turian attitude. Dex said, 'Understood. Hopefully it won't come to that.'  
Narack snorted. 'I think hope has no place down here.'  
There was movement on one of Dex's screens. He looked down. 'Heads up,' he said. 'We have incoming. Straight ahead. I can see two - no, three! Three, uh, shapes.'  
'What sort of shapes?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex peered at the blurry image. The forms were still indistinct, but they were big and he could see movement. 'Bipedal, roughly my height, ovoid bodies - oh, yuck!'  
The things wandered into clear view.  
'Well,' Narack said, 'now we know where the rest of my troops are.'  
The things were composite entities, built from several batarians who had been fused together. They were seeing the completed version of what lay on the tables, Dex realised. The creatures had some sort of extra armour plating on top of their otherwise-naked bodies - there were no residual genitals, Dex noted. Apparently those were not considered necessary for whatever purpose these things had.  
A possible purpose was suggested by that each creature had melded into one of their arms. The gun design wasn't a familiar one to Dex, but its shape suggested efficacy.  
Their bodies were bulbous, awkward and brownish-grey in colour. Their movement had a shambling character, like the Collectors hadn't quite built them correctly. Still, they moved forward with no apparent hesitation.  
Then they sighted the turian's drone.  
They opened fire.  
Dex's drone erupted into life. The image on his screen vanished as the flamethrower leapt out. From where they were stood, he could see it, flickering orange in the mist. It made a hissing, spitting sound.  
'Wait,' Narack said, sounding alarmed. 'How do you know they're hostile?'  
'They shot first,' Dex said. 'That's usually a giveaway.'  
Krondesh said, 'Those things might have been made from your troops, batarian - but I don't think they were your troops. Not anymore.'  
The orange light in the mist went out. It was quite sudden.  
'Shit,' Dex said. 'They got my drone!'  
The shapes emerged from the mist.  
'Finch!' Dex barked. 'Where are you?'  
'Still working!' Her voice was tense. He could hear the concentration.  
The ex-batarians opened fire.  
Fortunately, the team knew what to do now. Krondesh let loose a Warp blast straight onto the nearest enemy. Narack followed a moment later with a well-co-ordinated charge. The ground shook as a biotic explosion ripped out.  
Dex lined up his sniper rifle on a creature. Luckily, however they had been made, it was not immune to a headshot. One vicious kick from the Widow and it went down.  
Dex was just lining up on the next one when it shot first.  
Fortunately his shields held long enough for him to roll behind a nearby pipe. Crouched behind the big, fat metal tube, Dex privately decided to write a thank-you note to the Predator suit's manufacturers. He was appreciating this not-being-a-dead-turian thing.  
The creature was shambling toward him. For such an awkward thing, it was fast. It was not, however, fast enough.  
Dex pulled the trigger back. The creature collapsed.  
He allowed himself a moment's satisfaction.  
It didn't last past the bellow from in the murk.  
Out of the fog, another of the turian-krogan hybrid monsters rushed them. It approached from the opposite side as the batarian hybrid-creatures. That was why none of them had seen it coming. With a moment of chagrin, Dex realised they'd just been flanked!  
Then the beast was on him.  
The first sweep of its huge mechanical claw bowled him over. The claw had been trying for a grab but Dex had dived into a quick roll first. Still the claw clipped his legs as it swung. Pain flared, shields hissed and he sprawled off to one side.  
The beast reared up and beat its chest. Mad red eyes glared at him.  
With a crackle and a hiss, a Warp field splashed over the creature's body. The biotic energies chewed and ate at the creature's plates.  
There was a flash and a bang.  
Narack had charged the monstrosity. Two differentiated biotic fields collided, catalysing each other’s' collapse. The resulting explosion staggered the monster.  
Crouching on one knee, Dex had just enough time.  
He brought up the Widow, sighted down it, and pulled off two shots in quick succession. They smashed into the damaged monstrosity's head, smacking it to one side and then pulping it completely. With a final convulsive shudder, the monstrosity collapsed.  
'Well,' Dex said, 'it's good that we know how to deal with those things now.'  
'Pound them with everything,' Narack agreed from nearby.  
'Good shooting,' Krondesh said.  
'Finch,' Dex said. 'Are you done yet?'  
She sounded distracted. 'I'm working on it.'  
'Incoming,' Krondesh said.  
There were running shapes in the mist. They were covered in splotchy red patches. Those patches glowed, casting a soft and unhealthy luminance into the fog.  
'They look like Husks,' Krondesh said, 'but glowing red. And brighter. I wonder what that means?'  
'They won't be immune to a good charge,' Narack said.  
Uselessly, Dex began, 'Narack, wait -'  
Several things happened all at once. The red-glowing Husks emerged from the fog. Narack charged the nearest one. Dex caught a glimpse of the batarian colliding with it.  
The glowing Husk exploded.  
Narack was knocked backwards, staggering as he went. Burning Husk-juice hissed and fizzled and fried over his barrier.  
'Oh fuck,' Krondesh said, with evident disgruntlement.  
Dex said, 'Krondesh! Cover Narack! Take the ones on the left!' There was only a single glowing incendiary Husk, but sniping was a slower business.  
Narack was still stumbling around, visibly dazed. The incendiary Husk on the right was closing on him. Dex had one shot left from this clip. He lined up on the Husk's head, as fast as he could. He hoped that popping the head wouldn't detonate anything else.  
The Widow kicked in his hands.  
The Husk's head vanished in a plume of gore. The Husk flopped to the ground, with an absence of any kind of explosion.  
From Narack's left, Krondesh had thrown a Warp blast over one of the two Husks there. Then the krogan hit the Husk with a shockwave.  
The Husk was thrown sideways, toward the other one. The two biotic fields explosively cancelled each other. The Husk itself detonated, but its blast was carried away from Narack and toward the remaining Husk.  
The other Husk staggered under the impact. Then it too exploded.  
'Whoa!' Krondesh said. 'Chain reaction! Never made one of them before!'  
The mad alien reptile sounded delighted.  
'I thought you preferred head-butting stuff to blowing it up,' Dex said.  
'We're not that picky. Either will do!' Krondesh pounded a fist in the air. The krogan was apparently suddenly enjoying himself.  
Narack had come to his senses. He took a look at the carnage around him, then shook his head and trotted back over.  
Before he could say anything, Dex said, 'In future, don't charge anything that glows bright red. It's probably bad news.'  
Narack took a quick look over his shoulder. 'Noted,' he said.  
'Ugh, guys,' the Finch said, 'there's a load of activity going through the node. No idea what it indicates. But it just lit up like a Christmas tree in a house fire.'  
'What's a Christmas tree?' Narack asked.  
There was motion in the fog. Disturbed swirls of mist rippled and twirled. Dex became aware of a humming noise, growing in volume.  
'Incoming,' Krondesh said, suddenly all business.  
Dex noticed a little crackle of static run over his shields. He felt a prickling sensation across his plates. Static discharge - that implied some sort of biotic field. A powerful field, too. What was coming?  
'Fuck,' Krondesh said.  
A sense of shape had coalesced deep in the mist. It flowed into clarity. It was a sort of biomechanical crab. Several exoskeletal limbs were tucked under its purplish-black carapace. It glided forward about two metres above ground. A vicious beak was at its front. It was surrounded by a rough sphere of violet luminance - the glow signifying the biotic field that Dex could feel.  
'I don't like that beak,' Dex said. 'Stay back from this thing.'  
What new monstrosity was this?  
The thing parted the last of the veil of mist. Then its limbs unfolded, dropping to the ground below it like a tripod. It reared up.  
The beak dropped open.  
'Spirits!' Dex gasped. 'It's full of Husks!'  
Dozens of Husk-heads stared out at him from inside the crab-thing's maw.  
Then the crab-thing lit up. Energy crackled across its body. Two hot, bright energy beams lanced out from its front. Dex had barely an instant to roll to one side before one of them hissed through the air where he had just been standing.  
The crab-thing turned and directed a new beam toward Krondesh. The krogan barely managed to get out of the way in time. It swept another beam over toward him, catching a glancing blow off of his barriers. Dex saw them flare and collapse.  
He fumbled with a new thermal clip for the Widow. As he slotted the clip into place he saw Krondesh hurl a shockwave at the crab-thing.  
Something new happened.  
The shockwave's cascade reached the violet glow around the crab-thing, and the shockwave failed. Dex watched in astonishment as the spiralling blast of dark energy sprayed apart into thousands of useless hissing filaments. They dissipated without doing anything visible to the crab. A frustrated heathaze fluttered in the air, the biotic energy expended into a useless random heating of the gas molecules. Dex felt the slight backwash of air as it passed over his shields.  
Krondesh, not one to give up easily, followed it up with a Warp blast. That proved equally ineffective, sputtering out into useless nothingness.  
'That glow,' Dex said. 'It's cancelling the biotics!' What was it? Some sort of super-powered biotic barrier?  
Krondesh sighed. 'Lucky we've got guns, then.'  
With a rattle of chitinous limbs, the crab-thing crouched down.  
Dex yelled, 'Look out - !'  
It sprang.  
It landed almost on top of Krondesh. Its limbs skittered and scratched on the rock. It swung its ponderous beak down, mouth widening -  
Krondesh shoved his Claymore straight into the hole and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked back with a roar.  
The crab-thing jerked and rolled backwards. Its violet glow sputtered out. Krondesh swung out with his Claymore. The sooty-orange omni-blade scraped across the crab-thing's chitin plates, releasing a horrible sound and a shower of sparks. Some fragments fell down and a long score-mark was left behind. The crab-thing shuddered.  
There was a flash and a bang as Narack charged it.  
'Hey everyone!' Dex heard the Finch shout. 'I think I've got it!'  
The crab-thing lit up with another surge of eye-beams. One ran right over Krondesh. Dex saw his barriers shudder and collapse. The krogan fell back.  
Narack unleashed a burst of Punisher fire. The rounds rattled against the plates of the thing's sides. Effortlessly, the crab-thing batted him aside with a leg.  
The crab-thing turned.  
Narack contrived to land in an awkward roll, armour plates cracking against the rock. He struggled to his feet. The crab-thing was facing him. It tensed up. It crouched. It sprang -  
It flailed in mid-air.  
It missed Narack by a hair's breadth, collapsing to the floor with a bone-jarring thud. Its limbs flopped uselessly down. It didn’t move. The glow was gone and all signs of life had vanished. Dex boggled. What had just happened?  
'The node's offline,' the Finch said, exulting. 'I've done it! Their network's down!'  
All around them, little blue lights were flickering and dying out on banks of machinery. The faint background sound of alien equipment humming and whirring was falling into nothingness.  
Silence descended on the room.  
'Well,' Krondesh said, 'that was effective.'  
Narack looked at the dead crab-thing and shuddered. 'It tried to jump on me!' he said.  
'Well you did just charge it,' Krondesh pointed out.  
Narack still seemed bemused. 'Why would pulling a network node take it down?'  
The Finch said, 'This is just a guess. But I think the Collectors were routing their constructs' packets through the nodes. That's why traffic was so high immediately before each attack. When I killed the last node - it must've been like cutting your spinal cord. Disconnect the brain from the limbs. That's why the crab there collapsed.'  
'Just as well that got it,' Narack said. 'I'm not sure we could hurt it much.'  
'Speak for yourself,' Krondesh said. 'I'd be quite happy to hurt it. All day if needs be.' The alien reptile ambled over and delivered a forceful kick to the side of the crab-thing.  
Dex said, 'I think it's time we got out of here. Presumably the Collectors have some way to reboot their network. I don't think we should still be here when they do it.'  
'That sounds like a good plan,' the Finch said. 'Let's just hope the elevators are still working.'  
Dex said to Narack, 'Are any of your troops unaccounted for?'  
Narack said, 'I've been counting those batarian cyborg things. And ... what we saw on the tables. And ... no. If anything, we've seen too many of the cyborg things.'  
'They must have brought down other batarians as well,' the Finch said, sounding a little ill.  
Before anyone had time to dwell on that thought, Dex said, 'Let's get to the elevators.'  
The return journey proved far less eventful than the inward one had been. They did get one surprise when they reached the elevators, however.  
'Oh,' the Finch said, staring at the unmoving platform.  
'Your network-bothering took that down as well,' Krondesh said.  
'Are we stuck here?' Narack asked. He sounded worried.  
That was an ominous prospect. Dex hadn't seen anything to eat or drink down here, and the Collectors would be back soon. And then there was the issue of all the un-oxygenated air above their heads - was the filtering barrier still in place, or had that gone down too?  
Dex looked up, assessing the situation. There was no plausible way that they could climb back up to where the grate was. He said, 'Do you think there's anything you do?'  
The Finch sounded thoughtful. 'With all the nodes we've taken down, I've gained some data on their systems architecture. Perhaps...'  
'You have an idea?'  
'The network is centralised,' she said, 'but the mechanism is probably local. In the platform, I mean. If I could feed it some power from my omnitool, I might be able to trick into activating. Without central instructions, I mean.'  
'Can you do that?' Dex asked.  
'Basically it would be a really low voltage overload pulse,' she said. 'Just enough to conduct some current through the mechanism, give the circuits inside a little tickle. Not enough to do any actual damage.' She considered the possibilities and poked away at her omnitool. 'Yes,' she said, sounding more confident. 'Yes, it's do-able.'  
'Should we get on the platform?' Dex asked.  
She nodded. 'I might only be able to trigger it once - so yes!'  
They all piled onto the platform.  
The Finch aimed her omnitool at the circuits. There was a faint hiss of electricity. Dex didn't see any sparks - presumably the currents were too low for that.  
Beneath their feet, the elevator platform jolted into life. It ascended smoothly and without fuss all the way up to the previous level. They passed through the air-barrier on the way. Apparently that was still active. Dex supposed it made sense that system would have a dedicated circuit to run on.  
They didn't return to the caves with the laboratory and the broken krogan eggs. Rather, they went straight back up to the top level.  
The corpses of the two dead Collectors were still there near the main airlock, as was the heap of dismembered and discarded bodies nearby. Dex went to the other side of the platform and took a quick look down. The grating was still visible at the back of the platform below them, twisted and bent out of shape. 'Doesn't look like anyone's been through here,' he reported. 'Apparently all their troops were ahead of us but none behind.'  
'So we're after Kat now,' Krondesh said.  
Dex nodded. 'I think the evidence is good enough that she needs disposing of,' he said.  
'It's a dead issue,' Narack said. 'I can't see Aria letting her live after all this. Even if she doesn't believe your other evidence, this facility alone is a clear attempt at an alternate powerbase. To be honest, shooting Kat will probably be nicer than whatever Aria would do.'  
'We need to go to the control room, then,' Dex said. 'That's where she'll be.'  
The Finch looked at the airlock door in front of them. 'We might as well go out the front way,' she said. 'It's quicker.'  
Dex nodded. 'Time's wasting. Let's move.'


	29. Kat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A final confrontation happens. A turian and his allies find themselves facing the asari who set all this in motion. And Kat isn't alone - she has friends of her own. And Kat hasn't wasted any opportunities in the meantime - her new friend has taught her some tricks ... can the team complete their mission, or is this it?

The outer door of the airlock opened without fuss. 'It's running on the mine's network, not the Collectors, I guess,' the Finch said. They piled into it and the lock began its cycle. With four of them in there, it was crowded. Dex felt tense and twitchy. He wanted to get out of here. He was planning out the next leg of the journey in his head. Once they'd dealt with Kat, it would be back to their vehicle, and then a drive back to the pick-up point -  
The inner door hissed open.  
It revealed a surprise.  
'Well,' Kat said, smiling in an unpleasant way, 'what do we have here?'  
Dex tensed to roll. He never got a chance to complete the motion. Kat gestured negligently with one hand. Suddenly Dex couldn't move. Even his chest felt tight. There was a soupy, heavy pressure all around his body. He could feel electric tingling crawling over him.  
Kat was stood in the corridor, flanked by two Collectors. One of them was a normal one. The other was glowing, covered with the same fiery biotic energies Dex had seen earlier.  
'You were right,' Kat said to the fiery Collector. 'We do indeed have intruders.'  
It turned its angular head toward her. 'We are Harbinger,' it said. 'We are never wrong.'  
Dex stared. His lungs were burning now - he could manage only small, short gasps of air. The energy field had him locked in place. But even past the discomfort, he still managed to feel confusion. How many Harbingers were there? He was sure he'd shot at least one earlier!  
Kat smiled at the Collector. 'Yes,' she said. 'And this stasis bubble you taught me is so useful. I can keep this lot penned up as long as I like!'  
'They may be experiencing respiratory distress,' Harbinger noted. 'You may wish to reduce the field.' It paused, then added, 'Or you may not.'  
Kat looked irritated, but she waved a hand. The vice-like grip on Dex's diaphragm eased a bit. He took a thankful, desperate gasp of air. The burning sensation in his lungs faded a bit.  
'What the hell,' he croaked, 'is this?'  
Kat's eyes snapped onto him, recognition crossing her face. 'Dex,' she said, sounding smug. 'What a surprise, meeting you here. You always did seem to like complicating my plans. Pity you couldn't just get yourself blown up along with that idiot purple krogan.'  
'Screw you, asari,' Krondesh growled.  
She looked in his direction. 'Oh yes, there's the krogan too. How convenient. With that nice new stolen hat of yours, I almost didn't recognise you.'  
Kat's voice was filled with condescension. Her face was twisted into a sneer. Dex remembered her as vicious and selfish but also cunning, and yet he couldn't see any cunning in that expression. She seemed hollow somehow, as if something was missing. He noticed that she kept glancing at the Harbinger Collector, as if in need of reassurance. For its part, the animate bug remained inscrutable and expressionless. Whatever its views on the situation were, they were a mystery.  
It turned its head toward Kat. 'They damaged the hardware in the laboratory,' it said. 'There was a networking interruption.'  
She said, 'Is that why you had to ... do what you did?'  
The Collector glanced back at Dex and the others. It said, 'They know about our ability to seek new forms. We doubt they understand what they saw, but they did see it.'  
'I doubt they understand anything,' Kat said, her face twisting into a deeper scowl. She had a tick above one eye, Dex noted.  
He also noted that her skin tone was sallow, more of a greyish shade than its usual deep blue. Her eyes were sunken. She was wearing the same jumpsuit she always had in the past, but it hung looser than Dex remembered. She seemed skeletal. He wondered if she was eating properly.  
It was unpleasantly reminiscent of the Husks they'd met inside the room.  
Apparently the Finch could see the same thing. Dex heard her speak. 'Are you all right, Kat? You don't look well.'  
Kat sneered. 'Oh, the human. You as well? How convenient. Three of my enemies in one place.'  
'We're only your enemies,' the Finch said, 'because you tried to kill us all. If you hadn't done that, I wouldn't be here. Nor would they.'  
Apparently trying to reason with Kat wasn't going to go anywhere. Her face spasmed. 'Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!' A vein was pulsing in her brow. Her pupils had shrunk to points. Her fists were clenched and she was breathing fast and shallow gasps, each movement of the chest a short, convulsive jerk. She was clearly in an emotionally-volatile condition.  
'So we're just supposed to stand here quietly?' the Finch asked. 'You drop a bubble on us and we're supposed to just stand here in deferential silence? Jesus. Just piss off, Kat.'  
'You come here, you damage my facility, you ruin all my plans,' Kat said, 'and I'm just supposed to let you?'  
'Kat,' the Finch said, 'your Collector friends were cutting people up and making monsters in that.'  
Krondesh said, 'How the hell can you justify those eggs? I don't think even a frog would go that far.'  
Dex blinked. An unfavourable comparison to a salarian? Coming from a krogan, that was a damning verdict.  
Narack said to Kat, 'We saw what you did to my troops. Do you mean to claim you didn't know about any of this?'  
Kat sneered. 'You're only aliens,' she said. 'You couldn't possibly understand.'  
The Harbinger Collector apparently felt a need to intervene. It said to Kat, 'They do not understand. They are your inferiors. You are the future of your species. They are nothing.'  
In a moment of irrelevant abstraction, Dex wondered how it was speaking. It didn't appear to have a mouth. There must be some sort of speaker hidden somewhere in that body, he supposed. Either that or it was using its biotics to move the air.  
Kat's eyes turned to the Collector, and the anger evaporated from her face. It was replaced by a glassy-eyed, slack-jawed reverence. There was no glimmer of self-awareness or critical evaluation anywhere in her eyes. Her awe was as total as it was flawless.  
The expression made Dex feel queasy.  
To the Collector, she said, 'You are beautiful. I'm so happy I have you!'  
The Finch said, 'If I wasn't stuck in this bubble, I would shudder.'  
'Agreed,' Krondesh said.  
Kat turned back, shooting the group a poisonous glare. 'Your smart mouth will be the end of you, monkey,' she said.  
The Finch hissed. 'How dare you?'  
'Oh dear,' Krondesh said. 'Kat, you do realise that's a particularly nasty insult amongst humans? And one freighted with some unpleasant stuff?'  
'I don't care,' the Finch said. 'Harbinger says you're inferior. Harbinger is always right. The views of the inferior are unimportant.'  
Something that had just been said moments ago nagged at Dex. 'It said you're the future of your kind,' he said.  
She smiled. There was a smug glimmer in her eyes. 'Perhaps I should eat your mind,' she said. 'I could make you enjoy it, you know. You'd cry out in ecstasy while your nervous system burned out.'  
'Oh fuck,' Krondesh said. 'She's an Ardat-Yakshi!'  
That actually surprised Kat. 'You've heard of us?' she asked.  
The krogan sighed. 'Oh come on. It's hardly as secret as you asari like to think. For fuck's sake, AY is a character-class in Galaxy of Fantasy! And the medical literature's full of papers on AY syndrome. But I'm guessing you're a bit more than that, aren't you? You're not a footnote on a diagnostic chart. You don't just give your partner a bad headache, do you?'  
Kat looked smug. 'Only those who are unworthy of me die,' she 

said. She looked at the Harbinger Collector with that same, sick look of adoration.  
'I see,' Krondesh said, sounding clinical. 'Replaceable drones, then. Well, that explains a bit.'  
'The central intelligence is at one remove,' the Finch said. 'So it doesn't suffer. Yuck.'  
Dex felt his mandibles shake.  
The Harbinger Collector said nothing, but it didn't refute them either.  
'An Ardat Yakshi,' Narack said. 'Fucking hell.'  
The Finch sighed. 'I should have guessed. An asari matriarch with a callous attitude and an unclear past, who sets herself up in the drug trade on Omega. No signs of any friends or any stable personal relationships. An obsession with wealth and power. All the warning signs were there, weren't they?'  
'Karrean,' Dex said. 'He was never going to rule Omega, was he?'  
Kat laughed. 'That batarian idiot? No. Once Aria was out of the way, he was going to meet with a terrible night-time accident. Quite the tragedy, I'm sure you'd agree.'  
'Do you think Hegemony loyalists would accept an asari stepping in over the corpse of their man?' Narack asked.  
'Who said anything about a corpse? The aneurysm would leave him a vegetable, but a living vegetable. Whilst he's lying there on the life-support machine, I just step in to handle his job. His idiot friends are all busy mourning and waiting for the boss to actually die. While they're all distracted, I consolidate my position.' She shrugged. 'An elegant plan.'  
'What a pity we mucked it up by giving Karrean to Aria,' the Finch said.  
Dex said, 'I don't believe I'm saying this - but I'm starting to think we might have done Karrean a favour there.'  
Kat's faced twisted with contempt. She snorted.  
Narack said, 'When I get back to the Suns, I'm going to file a report on this. Kat, I don't think we'll be doing any more business with you. The cost-stroke-benefits aren't positive on this trade.'  
Kat smiled again. It wasn't a pleasant expression. 'Oh, I have good news,' she said. 'I can save you the trouble of all that paperwork. Bureaucracy is so tedious, don't you think?'  
Dex heard feet clanging on the decking in the tunnel. A moment later, several Collectors appeared. They had guns, and they took up station behind Kat and the Harbinger.  
The Harbinger looked at Kat. 'Do you want them dead?' it asked.  
She said, 'Do you need them for your work?'  
It shook its head. 'We've learnt enough here,' it said. 'We have the data we need. We've even seen how some of our constructs perform in combat. Whilst that was not our plan, the information is useful all the same.'  
'So you don't need more turians or krogan?' she asked.  
'We need plenty,' the Harbinger said, 'but there are planets full of them. Those will suffice.'  
Kat said, 'In that case, strip them off all their gear and have them restrained. Stash them somewhere. Separately. I'll deal with them later.'  
The Collectors moved forward. They chittered and hissed. Dex tensed.  
The stasis bubble evaporated.  
The Finch apparently wasn't expecting its disappearance. She collapsed to the ground with a grunt. She'd made the classic mistake of letting the bubble take her weight. Krondesh stumbled but caught himself. Narack, as another biotic and a quick reactor, apparently knew what was coming and didn't even stagger.  
Dex barked into his helmet microphone, 'Everyone! Attack! Now!'  
Dex pushed against the floor with his toes, throwing himself forward. He smacked straight into the nearest Collector.  
The bug apparently hadn't been expecting to collide with an unbalanced turian. They both rolled to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Dex had one advantage - he'd been planning this. As they fell, he slammed a punch into the Collector's head. It spun the Collector's angular skull to one side, just in time for it to crack into the decking.  
Dex rolled off of the prone Collector, giving it a kick in the face as he did so. There was just an instant before another Collector leapt onto him. It drew a massive knife. Dex grabbed its wrist and yanked. They both spun over and went down onto the floor again.  
As Dex struggled with the Collector, a general brawl had broken out around them. Krondesh charged one Collector, smashing it into the wall with an enraged roar. Another one tried to jump on him, only to get brutally backhanded by the krogan.  
There was a blue flash and a bang of displaced air. Narack had charged the Harbinger Collector. Pent-up momentum threw them to the side. The two of them went flying into a wall, Harbinger first. Before the Collector could react, Narack brought his fist up. He delivered a savage punch straight to the Collector's head. Dex heard the exoskeleton crack.  
The biotic corona around the Collector stuttered and blinked out. It fell lifeless to the ground. Wasting no time, Narack looked up and identified a new target. There was a flash and a bang as he charged again.  
Motion caught Dex's eye.  
Before his head finished turning, a biotic field smashed into him. He was thrown from his feet. His suit's sheilds flared. With a bone-jarring thump he hit the wall beside him. Stunned, Dex slid down the wall and flopped onto the ground.  
Kat was glaring at him, fury writ large across her face. A biotic corona surged over her body. 'You monster!' she shouted. 'You killed him! You killed Harbinger! You monster!'  
She began a mnemonic gesture. Dex realised she was about to throw him again. Instinctively, he knew this would hurt -  
Fire splashed over Kat.  
She screamed and staggered back. The biotic corona collapsed. There was a crackle of electricity. A sooty orange fireball bloomed around her. She was hurled to the ground.  
Krondesh's shotgun barked. The last Collector had met its end. An uneasy silence descended on the corridor.  
'She's dead,' Narack said.  
The Finch was stood behind them with her arm raised, shaking a little. The omnitool's glow surrounded it.  
Dex dragged himself to his feet. 'Good timing,' he said to her.  
Her arm wobbled as she lowered it. She was staring at Kat's charred body. 'Fuck,' she said, sounding hoarse. 'I killed her. Shit.'  
'Yeah,' Krondesh said, 'you did. Well done, mammal.'  
'Shit,' the Finch said, sounding a little sick.  
Little traceries of flame fluttered over what was left of Kat's jumpsuit. Tendrils of greasy smoke drifted up. The burns on her exposed skin were hideous. Whilst it was an end, there was nothing dignified about it. As Dex watched the remaining flames began to go out. Almost all of the incendiary gel had been burnt off now. There was little left to feed them. The fire was hot, but not hot enough to ignite fatty tissue or flesh.  
Narack looked down at Kat's corpse. 'I can't say she'll be much missed,' he said.  
Dex heard a noise. It sounded like a neck ring being unlatched. There was a clunk as something was dropped on the floor. He turned.  
The Finch had dropped to her knees. Her helmet lay on the floor next to her. She was being violently sick and she was shaking.  
After a few moments, the retches started coming up dry. Then they stopped, and she slumped back against the nearest wall, not even looking at the puddle of vomit next to her. Her dark eyes were wide and they had a shocked, empty look in them.  
Apparently the events of the last few days had caught up with the Finch. Unlike the other three, she had little experience of violence and it had clearly left its mark.  
'I fucking set fire to her,' the Finch said in a hollow voice.  
Krondesh walked over to her. For a moment, Dex tensed. What was he about to do?  
The krogan sat down next to her and put his shotgun down. 'She didn't leave you any choice,' he said.  
'I set fire to her,' the Finch repeated.  
Krondesh said, 'She was about to kill army boy over there. That Throw-field she was working up would have done it. I was busy beating up a bug, but I damn well felt it when she started. Her biotics were strong.'  
'I...' the Finch shook her head and trailed off. She looked at the krogan with a confused expression.  
Krondesh continued, 'And that wasn't the end of it. You heard what she said. None of us were meant to survive this encounter. It really was us or them. And given that they were doing experiments on live victims, working with slavers and abducting innocent victims...' The krogan shrugged, his shoulder plates rattling. 'Better for it to be them, not us. I mean, none of us here are perfect people. But we're not like that either.'  
The krogan put an arm round her shoulders. The human looked tiny next to the alien reptile. She was sat there, hunched up, looking miserable.  
'I don't feel good about this,' the Finch said.  
Krondesh said, 'Nor should you. What we did here was probably necessary, but that's not the same as good. It's important to keep that distinction in mind. But, Kat made her choices. She wasn't without agency here.'  
'But,' the Finch said, 'did she, though? I mean, we know the Collectors have that technology that can influence minds. How much of this was her?'  
Krondesh said, 'She wasn't always under their power. At some point in the past, for whatever reason, she decided to ally with them. That decision led her to here. And from what we've seen of her motives, that decision wouldn't have been a noble one.'  
'You all seem so calm about all of this,' the Finch said.  
Krondesh said, 'Well perhaps we shouldn't be. Is being blase about violence really healthy? Or does it just mean we've all seen more of it than is good for us?'  
This reminded Dex of his longstanding uneasiness about being a mercenary. Aloud, he said, 'I wonder if this is how someone like Kat gets started up?'  
Krondesh's helmet nodded. 'Possibly. A long lifespan of centuries, each one marked by more and more atrocities. Until eventually you're so jaded you stop caring. And then your moral compass doesn't work any more. And before you know it you're up to your neck with people like Karrean and you've mortgaged your soul to the Collectors.'  
The Finch looked more composed. She seemed to find some merit in the krogan's observations. 'You could be right,' she said.  
Krondesh said, 'It's a familiar thing. There's a whole theme about this sort of stuff in Tuchankan oral traditions. The cruel warlord who's centuries old and has sent generations of warriors to their deaths. But is he really a monster or is he just what a broken world has made him?'  
'What, you're suggesting Kat wasn't a monster? How does that make this better?'  
'I'm not sure that I was suggesting anything,' Krondesh said. 'I just thought it was an interesting cultural parallel.'  
Narack spoke. 'But if Kat might not be a monster,' he said, 'then we probably aren't either. No matter what else we've had to do.'  
The Finch considered the arguments, chewing on her lower lip. Then a decision appeared to be made. She unfolded herself from under Krondesh's arm and stood up. She bent down and scooped up her helmet. 'Okay,' she said. 'I guess you're right. On a practical level I suppose maundering doesn't help. Let's get out of here. And off this fucking shithole of a moon.'  
Narack nodded with enthusiasm. 'There's a plan I can support!'  
Dex considered the matter. 'The four of us will fit fine in the M30,' he said, 'but what about Kat's body? Aria wants the evidence.'  
The Finch said, 'Find a tarpaulin, bundle it up, strap it to the roof. Kalthis is almost always sub-zero - we were very unlucky with that rainstorm on the way in. The cold will preserve the body. And it's not like she needs to breathe anymore.'  
Dex nodded. 'Okay, we can do that. Then the Amarei picks us up, we shove her remains in a freezer, and it's back to Omega.'  
With the plan made, they got to work.


	30. A Measure of Freedom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team return to Omega to seek their reward. Dex has the opportunity to hand back the keys on his grotty old apartment. With Krondesh's help, he actually manages to get back all of his deposit.
> 
> Then, later on, the team meet once more for dinner. Plans for the future are discussed, and a conclusion is reached.
> 
> A long journey nears its end.

'Well look at this.' Aria T'Loak shook her head, her face a mixture of exasperation and contempt. 'T'Raik, you dumb bitch.' She closed down the omnitool screen.  
Dex, Krondesh, the Finch and Narack were stood in the VIP lounge at Afterlife. Booming music echoed up around them, dulled by the lounge's walls and windows. The team had come straight here from the docks. The journey back from Kalthis had been uneventful, if also anticlimactically-dull. The M30 had made its way back across the cold, barren surface of Kalthis to the pickup point, where they'd been collected by the Amarei. Captain Tareal had greeted Narack and Kat's carcass with a raised eye-ridge but no other comment, aside from pointing the way to a suitable storage freezer.  
And now they were here. Kat's remains had been delivered to Aria's lieutenants. The team had also shared their omnitool recordings of the events at the base with Aria. She had spent several minutes reviewing the key footage.  
'Well,' she said, looking at them, 'it seems congratulations are in order. Your would-be boy scout team did well. T'Raik's out of my scalp, and those fucking bugs have been knocked back. Well. Done.' She grimaced.  
She was flanked by a couple of her troops. They were visibly-armed and in full armour. Security was tight here. Dex and the others had been required to hand in their guns at the entrance to the lounge.  
Dex said, 'What do you think about the base on Kalthis? Was anything ... known about this?'  
T'Loak shrugged. 'I don't much bother with the rest of the system. Maybe that was a mistake. We know Collector activity has gone up in recent years. But no, I didn't know this was going on. I certainly wouldn't have tolerated it if I did.'  
'They'd clearly been building it for a while,' Krondesh said. 'It was a big facility.'  
Aria said, 'They won't be reclaiming that facility. I'm going to detail a couple of my ships to go and bomb that crater.'  
'It was some way underground,' the Finch said.  
Aria shrugged. 'Let's see how a few megatons of canned sunshine deal with that, shall we?'  
'Ah,' the Finch said. 'That sort of bomb. Okay.' She nodded.  
Aria considered the team, a glint in her eye. She looked in particular at Narack. 'Of course,' she said, 'there is one wrinkle.'  
Dex felt a shiver of tension. His mandibles shifted. 'That would be?' he asked.  
'The original agreement was with three of you,' she said. 'Not four.'  
Dex nodded. The money question. Luckily, the team had already discussed this on the way back. 'We're not asking for more money,' he said.  
For a moment Aria looked surprised. 'You're not?'  
'No. We talked about this on the way in. Krondesh suggested we should take the existing pot and split it four ways, rather than three.'  
Aria raised an eyebrow. 'Surprising. Most people on Omega would demand more.' She looked at the krogan. 'You do know you'll each get less that way?'  
'Yes,' Krondesh said. 'But Kat got greedy and look what happened to her. Anyway, it's still several million credits each. That's not exactly poverty, is it?'  
Aria nodded, considering the idea. 'An equitable approach,' she said. 'Perhaps there is method as well madness.'  
Narack said, 'Also we doubted you'd be eager to be bargained up.'  
Aria smiled coolly. 'Quite,' she said. 'That deduction was wise.' She shrugged. 'Okay. You'll get your money. I'll get the credit transfers authorised immediately. Do with it what you want. Just remember not to cross me.'  
'We have no intention of making Kat's mistakes,' Dex said.  
'Good,' Aria said. 'Now I've got a lot more business to deal with today. There's a bar downstairs. Go and have a drink. Or whatever you feel like doing. Just do it somewhere else.'  
Dex knew a dismissal when he heard one.

*

'Did you really live here for so long?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex looked around the small apartment. Hard to believe he'd ever considered this place home. The rickety bed was still there, with that little table next to it. There was the small kitchen area, really just some units and a sink. The units were scuffed and tired-looking and the surfaces were scratched and dented. Over there was the door to the tiny bathroom and next to it was the door to the small room Dex had repurposed as his armoury.  
He shook his head. 'I know,' he said. 'Crazy, isn't it?'  
'How long till your landlord arrives?'  
'Maybe half an hour. I just need a few things from the armoury.'  
'I'll wait here,' Krondesh said.  
'Okay.' Dex walked through to the armoury.  
It was a month since the team's return to Omega. To Dex's surprise, the credit transfer had gone through without trouble - he was now actually rich. It was taking some getting used to. Almost as soon as the money had deposited, Dex had dropped down his notice on his apartment and had gone and bought one in one of the better bits of the station. The turian would not miss this closet.  
Now that he was here again, one thing Dex noted was just how few possessions he'd had since arriving on Omega. There were no ornaments and no keepsakes anywhere in the flat. He'd been living almost hand-to-mouth over those months. If he'd taken more assignments and been less picky, he'd have made more money. But on the other hand, there was the lesson provided by Kat to keep in mind. If he'd been greedier and more violent, there was also more of a chance that he'd now be dead.  
Dex entered the armoury. He dug out a carry-bag and quickly filled it with the things he wanted to keep. Then he took it back to the main room.  
Krondesh was waiting. The krogan was watching something on his omnitool. Recorded speech muttered into the room. It sounded like some sort of documentary. The krogan's shotgun was folded up and hanging from its slot on hs back.  
'I'm done,' Dex said.  
Krondesh clicked off his omnitool. 'Should we wait in here?'  
Dex shook his head. 'I'd wait outside. Don't want to get bottled up.'  
Krondesh said, 'Is this likely to be a high-risk handover?'  
Both of them were dressed in their full combat armour, and both of them were armed. Dex had his Mattock clipped to its slot on his back. In his free hand he was holding a set of keys. He'd taken this apartment partly because it had a solid, physical lock rather than an electronic one - he was under no illusions about how difficult software locks were to hack.  
Dex said, 'I'm not sure. The landlord never seemed that crazy, but this is Omega.'  
'Point taken,' Krondesh said with a nod. 'Okay, let's go out.'  
They went out into the corridor to wait. As they left, Dex put out the lights on his old apartment for the last time. His fingers hesitated over the key, but then he pushed it decisively.  
The door closed behind them, shutting off the now-dark space.  
They waited in the public corridor. At this time of day it was deserted. The walls were dirty, one of the lighting-panels was flickering and making an annoying buzzing sound and there were bits of litter scattered here and there.  
'Wonderful neighbourhood,' Krondesh said, his sarcasm evident.  
'You said you were living in the Lower Warrens before,' Dex said.  
'Yeah,' Krondesh said. 'Means I know a shithole when I see one.'  
'I can't argue against that,' Dex agreed.  
It was a tense wait. Handing back the keys on a rented property could sometimes be dangerous on Omega. Once an unscrupulous landlord wasn't making money off of a client any more, they didn't always behave decently. Dex had heard all sorts of rumours, from quotidian things like deposits being stolen and extra charges being levied to horror stories like unfortunate ex-tenants being abducted and sold at the markets. He had no idea how true those stories were, but given that this was Omega, you could never be sure. Dex had no interest in staring in real life's equivalent to a horror vid - hence the guns. And it obviously wasn't just Dex who had misgivings. When he'd mentioned that he'd be handing back the keys soon, Krondesh had actually volunteered to accompany him.  
Dex's landlord arrived fifteen minutes late.  
By the time they arrived, Dex had assumed the worst. He had his Mattock gripped in his right hand and was unfolded and engaged. He was just getting ready to dump the keys on the floor and walk away when Krondesh raised a hand.  
'I hear footsteps,' the krogan said.  
And there they were. Dex could hear the sound of bootheels clicking on the floor. A moment later and he saw shadows appear around the corner of the corridor just ahead of them.  
His landlord had arrived. And she'd brought company.  
The landlord was another turian. She arrived flanked by two mercs. Dex noted they belonged to a group he wasn't familiar with. Their suits were dark red and had a claw-like insignia. As was often the case with mercs, both of them were carrying M8 Avengers. Typical mercs, going cheap. Dex's mandibles flexed with a reflexive sneer. If needs be, he reckoned he and Krondesh could demolish the two heavies pretty quickly.  
Dex's landlord took one look at him and immediately seemed nervous.  
Dex said, 'They key's right here.' He held out his left hand, with the key sat on it. 'Send me back my deposit and I'll put it on the floor. And we'll be on our way.'  
The landlord said, 'There's not going to be any trouble, is there?'  
'Not unless you start it,' Krondesh said.  
Dex's landlord looked at the krogan and she cringed back. 'No,' she said.  
'Transfer please,' Dex said. Rental damage deposits were routinely stolen on Omega, but Dex was not planning on being another statistic.  
His landlord brought up her omnitool. A defeated look washed across her face. Her mandibles moved. 'Here it is.' She tapped a couple of keys.  
A moment later, Dex's tool pinged. The credit transfer had gone across. He noticed it was the full amount, with no deductions. Good.  
'Okay,' he said. 'Here's the key.' He squatted down, careful to keep the landlord and her mercs in sight at all times, and put the key on the floor. It clinked as it landed on the decking. 'We'll be on our way now.'  
He and Krondesh withdrew.  
A few moments later they were back at Dex's new skycar, which he'd parked some distance from the apartment. They were in a parking area along the bottom of one of the public transit corridors. Columns of skycars whooshed and growled above them as they flew on various errands.  
He and Krondesh got in. The skycar's roof folded shut. They lifted off and joined the stream of traffic.  
'Did she go through with it?' Krondesh asked. The krogan reached up and tugged off his helmet. It came loose with a click as the seals disengaged.  
Dex nodded. 'Yes. The full amount. You don't often get all of a deposit back.'  
'Well now you know the secret,' Krondesh said. 'When you go to negotiations, bring a gun and a friend.'  
'Who also has a gun,' Dex noted.  
'Well I wouldn't want you hogging all the fun,' Krondesh said. The alien reptile appeared to be in a good mood. He paused, then said, 'So we're still on for dinner?'  
Dex nodded. 'Narack and the Finch confirmed yesterday. I rang up the restaurant to check this morning, and they've definitely not lost our booking or any crap like that.'  
'Good,' Krondesh said. 'I'll probably need to get changed at yours, if that's okay. I've got my new suit on the back seat.'  
Dex had to admit to being intrigued. He'd never seen krogan formal wear before. He hadn't even realised it was a thing until Krondesh had turned up earlier carrying a plastic suit-bag as well as his shotgun.  
Dex navigated them into the right transit tunnel. It was one of the ones that ran between habitation cylinders. For a moment he felt a ghost of old fear as he remembered the explosion in the Gozu-Jemis Tube, which they'd so nearly been caught in. Still, it was the past now. Kat, Karrean and their dangerous schemes were gone. The shadow faded.  
'How's your purchase going?' Dex asked.  
'The apartment?' Krondesh said. 'Oh, that. I got the keys two days ago.'  
The krogan had been buying a place to live. After the experience of the Lower Warrens, he'd proved very picky about what he'd accept. Dex had obtained the keys on his new place in just a couple of weeks - property sales could happen fast on Omega when cash was available. Krondesh had taken longer. Dex gathered he'd been staying at the Finch's in the meantime.  
'Is it all okay?' Dex asked.  
'Yes,' Krondesh said. 'I spent that day checking all the fittings and stuff. It's got everything that it should do.'  
'You're in Kima now, aren't you?' Dex said.  
'Yeah. I want to be nowhere near the Lower Warrens.'  
Dex nodded. 'Agreed. I'll die a happy turian if I never set foot there again.'  
A few minutes later, the skycar landed in the private garage at Dex's new apartment. The krogan bounded out with his suit-bag and made a beeline for one of the spare rooms, so he could get changed.  
Dex went to the room he'd designated as his armoury to get changed. The Mattock went back onto the gun-rack on the wall, underneath the Black Widow. Dex stripped off his armour and put it into its cupboard. Then he changed into a formal suit, a dark blue jacket and trousers with green edgings. A pair of functional but well-polished and expensive boots completed the set. In the interests of safety Dex selected a small pistol, which went into the holster inside the jacket. He didn't think any of the heavy guns were needed, but being completely unarmed felt like a bad idea as well.  
Once he was ready, he went to the lounge to await Krondesh.  
The new apartment was much bigger than his old place. It was also much nicer. It had modern fittings, decent lights and plumbing and even two spare rooms as well as lounge, bedroom, armoury, both bathroom and the kitchen. Dex could actually have bought somewhere even larger, but he'd decided some caution with money was advisable.  
This was, after all, Omega, and Dex was well aware that misfortune was never more than one momentary accident away.  
A few minutes later the krogan reappeared. His battlegear was all neatly folded up and stowed in his bag. He was wearing the krogan version of a formal suit, complete with a large cowl for his hump. The suit was black edged with yellow around his wrists, neck and a pattern over his chest.  
Something caught Dex eye. 'Hey,' he said. 'The paint on your plates. It's all scuffed.'  
It was, too. The purple paint was cracked and peeling and whole sections were missing, exposing the natural brown of Krondesh's head-plates.  
The krogan nodded. 'Yes, it is,' he said. 'The other day I was due to repaint it all - and I suddenly thought, why?'  
Dex blinked, 'Why repaint it?'  
'Yeah. What happened on Tuchanka was years ago. And it wasn't my fault. Why am I still crucifying myself over being dragged into a political hanging? I thought about all we've done here - and the purple suddenly seemed absurd. I just thought, fuck it, I'll let it all peel off.' The krogan shrugged. 'Maybe it's time to leave the shame behind.'  
Dex considered that. 'Perhaps it is,' he said.  
'Shall we go?' Krondesh asked.  
Dex nodded. 'It's time, isn't it?'  
'Do you mind if I leave dump this here?' Krondesh hefted his bag. 'Don't think there's much point hauling it to the restaurant.'  
Dex nodded. 'Sure. It won't be a problem to collect it later.'  
With a rattle of armour plates, Krondesh deposited his bag in a corner of Dex's living room. They made their way back to the skycar and departed from the house.  
The restaurant was called the Gallery. It had started life as a private docking bay, before the company that owned it had gone bust during one of Omega's all-too-frequent depressions. The new owners had kept the big rectangular opening of the docking bay, but they had filled it with a mass-field reinforced picture window. They'd stripped out all the fittings from the bay and turned it into a split-level restaurant, with a dancefloor directly beneath the big window.  
The table Dex had reserved was on the bay's upper level. It had an amazing view out into space. One of the station's habitation cylinders was visible on the left-hand side. Beyond it, Sahrabarik shone its pinkish light inwards. The running lights of several ships could be glimpsed here and there.  
Dex and Krondesh were the first to arrive. They settled in. The waiter, a salarian, took their drinks orders and hurried off.  
'Well,' Krondesh said, 'this is all rather upmarket, isn't it? Certainly a change from that hatch we ate at last time. Remember that?'  
Dex nodded. There was a carpet under his feet; it was a deep velvety red shade. He rubbed at it with a foot. 'Indeed,' he said. 'It does feel like we've gone up in the world.'  
'Hello,' a new voice said.  
Dex looked up. The Finch had arrived. For a moment he almost didn't recognise her. She was wearing a black dress and appeared to be taller than he remembered. He blinked.  
She smiled, exposing those gleaming slab-like teeth. 'Heels,' she said, pointing down.  
Dex stared. 'You - what are those?'  
Her feet were strapped into two of the strangest-looking shoes Dex had ever seen. They weren't even slightly practical. Her toes were on the ground, more or less, but her heels had been pushed into the air on top of what appeared to be inch-long stilts. Bizarrely, the weird shoes had actually folded her feet into roughly the same arrangement as a turian's. Except what came naturally to a turian certainly didn't to a human.  
'Shoes,' she said, pulling out the chair in front of her. Its legs scraped on the carpet. She sat down. 'They're new. Like them?'  
'Uh...' Dex tried not to boggle. He folded his mandibles back against his face. 'Sorry. I'm really not that good with alien fashion.'  
'You should've seen what she was like when she was shopping,' Krondesh said. 'She took ages.'  
The Finch sighed. 'Krondesh, when was the last time I got to buy shoes?'  
'I thought you said you hated heels, Barbara?' Krondesh said.  
Dex blinked. Barbara?  
Apparently sensing his confusion, the Finch smiled. 'My actual Christian name,' she said. 'Customarily it's used amongst friends. And I figure I'm done with being the Finch.' She looked back at Krondesh. 'And actually, you're right. I loathe the things.'  
'Then why…?' Once again, Dex felt out of his depth.  
She shrugged. 'I just felt like breaking one of my own rules, just for once. Why not? These things will probably just go back into the cupboard after tonight, but for now they'll do. Call it too much time stomping around in combat boots - I just felt like a change.'  
'Your heels will kill you tomorrow,' Krondesh said.  
She shrugged. 'You're probably right. Oh look, here's Narack!'  
The batarian had arrived. He was dressed smartly too, in a sober light grey jacket and trousers. 'I see you all got here first,' he observed, pulling out the remaining chair.  
'Oh look,' the Finch - no, Dex corrected himself, Barbara - said as the waiter reappeared. 'Drinks time!'  
The turian and the krogan received their orders; the others selected what they wanted. The waiter keyed the table display to project the menus, then he disappeared off to get the new drinks.  
Dex said to Barbara, 'So you're done with the Finch persona? What about the business?'  
She shrugged. 'What about it? To be honest, I think I've had enough of it. And it looks like the station's economy's on the way down again. The labour market's rubbish. With so many vorcha doing all the unskilled stuff, there's not much demand. And they're paid sod all, so wage growth's been pretty negligible for the last couple of quarters. Lots of worried clients and hardly anyone hiring.'  
'So it's a recession,' Krondesh said.  
She nodded. 'It's looking a bit that way. Another aftershock from the market crash after the geth hit the Citadel, I think. Anywhere else the government can smooth this sort of stuff out with welfare and subsidies - but of course there's no government here. So no smoothing.'  
'So what are you thinking of doing?' Dex asked.  
She said, 'I'm debating going back to Earth, actually.'  
'What would you do?' Dex asked.  
'I've been looking into writing a book, actually,' she said. 'There's not much documentation on the Oculus project, and, well I was stood on Ground Zero for a lot of what happened. And there's been a flurry of interest recently. Retrospectives, nostalgia, that sort of thing. And with the money from the Kalthis business, well, I can take my time about it.'  
Krondesh said, ‘I thought you said all the Oculus stuff was locked up under IP agreements and other crap?’  
‘It is, but…’ She shrugged. ‘I can afford to hire a decent lawyer now. That tends to give you a path forwards.’  
Dex said, ‘Dare I ask, what about your old employer? You know, the one who was pushing people down crevasses and faking drug overdoses and stuff?’  
Barbara’s face wrinkled. ‘Oh, them. I don’t know. I just find that I feel less worried about them now. There’s something about pulling a gun on a bunch of Collectors that has that effect, you know? Also Earth isn’t the Terminus Systems. It has functioning law enforcement. And I suppose I can also afford a decent home security suite. Anyway it’s been a while now. They’ve probably even forgotten who I am. And if they did do anything, I reckon I could deal with it.’  
Dex nodded. 'Sounds plausible.'  
The waiter arrived with the next round of drinks.  
They decided to place their orders for the meals. After some discussion the three-course menu was selected. Dex was pleased to see that the dextro selection was actually quite good. At restaurants catering to mixed species clientele, the turian menus could be a bit hit and miss. Not at the Gallery, however.  
After everyone had ordered, the waiter took the menus away and vanished off.  
Krondesh said to Narack, 'So what are you doing with yourself at the moment?'  
Narack rolled all four of his eyes. 'That's an open issue,' he said.  
'What do you mean?' Barbara asked.  
Narack sighed. 'It seems there's been some pretty serious crazy shit going down while we were away. The Blue Suns are in chaos at the moment.'  
'What happened?' Dex asked.  
'What hasn't happened, you mean. First of all there was that attempt to take down Archangel.'  
Krondesh said, 'I heard that succeeded. No-one's seen him since.'  
Narack pulled a face. 'They're claiming a success. But it was at huge cost. Fuck only knows why, but Tarak decided to lead the operation himself.'  
'Tarak?' Barbara asked.  
Krondesh said, 'The Blue Suns' boss on Omega. Not a well-liked individual by all accounts.'  
Narack shook his head. 'He was a pain the backside. I used to hate it when he turned up to the Delivery Improvement meetings. Pointless rudeness and irrelevant questions, with the odd rant about whoever he didn't like this week. Anyway I know he was developing quite a hate-crush on Archangel, and it appears to have got the better of him. He led the takedown op personally. Dragged along half the senior management with him, too.'  
'Shit,' Dex said. 'Decapitation opportunity?'  
'Quite,' Narack agreed. 'Now they're all dead and the Omega Suns are headless. No-one seems to know who's in charge, all the departments are total chaos. It's a mess.'  
'What about head office?' Krondesh asked.  
Narack sipped his drink. 'Ah. There are problems there too.'  
'Oh?'  
'Something very odd seems to have happened involving a refinery on the planet Zorya. Apparently Director Santiago thought we were being cheated on a contract with Eldfell-Ashland. It seems he had the bright idea of seizing the refinery as enforced collateral against the debt.'  
'"Enforced collateral"?' Barbara asked.  
Narack shrugged. 'A merc business term. Out here in the Terminus, not every customer is good about making due what they owe. If you get a three-pee - a persistent payment problem - enforced collateral is one way to deal with it. Basically merc groups have guns, so you can grab someone or something the three-pee'er cares about. And stick that gun to their head until they cough up, basically.'  
'Charming,' Barbara said with a shudder.  
'It tends to rule out repeat business,' Narack said. 'When anyone asks me about it, I'd usually tell them not to bother. Customers don't come back once you've pulled a gun on them. But that said, if you're completely done with a client's bullshit, it can happen. I gather the Blood Pack are a lot more aggressive about this sort of thing.'  
Krondesh said, 'Shorting warlords tends to be false economy.'  
Dex said, 'So this Santiago thought stealing an entire refinery was clever?'  
Narack nodded. 'Obviously it wasn't. And to add to the madness, he went there to direct it personally, as well. It didn't end well. The reports are all abit confused. There don't seem to have been many survivors. But apparently a firefight broke out somehow. The refinery got shot up. I mean, to the point where it exploded.'  
'Exploded?' Barbara looked horrified. She shook her head with an appalled glint in her eyes.  
Narack said, 'Yes. And Santiago was killed, along with several of his lieutenants.'  
'So head office is a mess too,' Krondesh said.  
'And just a couple of days ago we got news that Purgatory had gone down the tubes as well,' Narack said.  
Dex frowned. 'I think that's a prison ship, isn't it?'  
Narack nodded. 'It was one of the Suns' flagship projects. Honestly I was never that sold on it. The ship was huge and it was a black hole for maintenance costs. With the prisoners all being the worst of the worst, the security costs were astronomical. Staff turnover was eye-wateringly high. And given that it moved around, the logistics of getting oxygen, food and water to it were awful. On paper it should've been a gold mine but in practise? Let's just say margins were a bit slim. Every time we had a Strategy Review meeting I'd argue for canning it.'  
'I take it no-one listened?' Dex asked.  
Narack snorted. 'It's a dead issue now. Apparently a prison riot broke out a few days ago, and it got a bit out of hand.'  
'How far out of hand?'  
'Put it this way: the ship was destroyed.'  
'Fuck,' Krondesh said.  
'Quite,' Narack said. 'Anyway the upshot of all of this is that the Suns' internal organisation has basically collapsed. The share price is in freefall at the moment - down twenty percent in the last three days! There's no strategic direction and the remaining local chapters are running in a vacuum. It's a big shambolic mess. So the other day I decided enough was enough.'  
'What did you do?' Dex asked.  
Narack said, 'I quit. I just dumped all my gear in the office, sent an email to Personnel saying "Bye!" and walked out. It means I'll lose a fortnight's pay, but under the circumstances that's an acceptable sacrifice.'  
Barbara nodded. 'Jesus. From the sounds of things, you made the right choice.'  
'Yeah,' Krondesh said. 'You don't want that sort of nonsense in your life.'  
'Thing is,' Narack said, 'it's not just the Suns who are in trouble at the moment. Eclipse and the Blood Pack are also having difficulties here on Omega. They all spent too much of their manpower on the Archangel thing. And also that recent plague has sapped everyone's strength too.'  
'I'm glad we missed the worst of that,' Krondesh said.  
Barbara said, 'I heard it was cured. Apparently some salarian doctor got involved, or something.'  
'I'd heard something similar,' Krondesh agreed. 'The rumour mill's been in overdrive recently. Hard to know what!s been going on, really. And the news sites are no help - half propaganda, half lies, all bullshit.'  
Dex thought back to his meeting with his former landlord earlier. 'I was handing back my keys on the old flat,' he said. 'My landlord had hired some mercs I didn't recognise. Dark red armour and a clawlike insignia.'  
Narack nodded. 'That would be the Talons,' he said. 'They've been moving into the areas the others have had to vacate. Previously they were just another non-entity drug gang. But with Kat's dealership gone and the big merc groups in a mess, they've had space to expand.'  
'Do we even know if Archangel's dead?' Krondesh asked.  
Narack spread his arms. 'No idea. They say they got him, and he hasn't done any hits for a while. But all we really know about the guy is that he was a turian who liked sniper rifles and the colour blue.'  
Krondesh snorted, then fixed Dex with a look. 'So for all we know he could've been any old bird, basically.'  
'Not this turian,' Dex said. 'Seriously, definitely not this turian.'  
'If he's not dead,' Narack said, 'then he's certainly done a decent disappearing act. I can't say he'll be much missed.'  
The waiter reappeared at that moment with their starters. Plates and bowls were distributed across the table. Dex had opted for a light soup. Barbara was having some sort of salad dish. Dex had no idea how to describe the platefull of things Narack was eating, except that he certainly wouldn't touch any of them. Krondesh also had a soup of some sort, complete with a dainty-looking roll. It was dwarfed by the massive krogan.  
A few minutes of determined food-munching began.  
'I hadn't realised how hungry I was,' Krondesh said after he'd made his soup disappear.  
'So what do you plan to do next?' Narack asked.  
'Me?' Krondesh glanced away, then looked back. 'Actually there is some news.' For a moment the krogan almost seemed nervous.  
'What?' Dex asked.  
'I got into Kima.' The words piled out all in a rush.  
Dex frowned, mandibles moving. 'I know that's where your new house is, but-'  
'No,' Krondesh said. 'I mean Kima College.'  
Barbara was smiling. 'A few days after Kalthis, he and I had a chat. I gave hia bit of help with the application form.'  
'More like she completely rewrote it,' Krondesh said.  
'And I also gave him an academic reference,' she added.  
'Wait,' Dex said, 'Krondesh. I think I remember you saying ages ago that you wanted to go to Kima, didn't you?'  
Krondesh nodded. 'A university that considers krogan applications. There aren't that many of them.'  
The Finch said, 'Krogan aren't technically banned from applying to most places - that would be racist! But, most places require paperwork - educational certificates, school documents, that sort of thing. And Tuchanka has no school system. So most krogan just wouldn't have that sort of thing.'  
Krondesh said, 'It's the sneaky sort of racism. Set up a tangle of procedural rules so that "those people" can never quite qualify. Then if anyone questions it just put your hands in the air and say "Oh sorry, we're just following the rules". It's all nicely at one remove, so how do you prove anything?'  
Barbara said, 'But of course Omega has no state-backed schooling system. So universities here basically have to use an entrance exam system instead. Call it the silver lining to anarchy - it makes it harder to do the structural-stroke-bureaucratic approach to racism. Sorry, I just slipped into academicese there, didn't I?'  
'Anyway,' Krondesh said, 'the form and the reference went in three weeks ago. I sat the entrance exam last week. For their combined liberal arts course.'  
'How was it?' Dex asked.  
Krondesh looked back at Barbara. 'Put it this way,' he said, 'I'm glad I borrowed her copy of Dilinaga's "Theses and contradictions". The paper was very heavy on early asari philosophy. It was pretty demanding. I was in that room for four hours. I was glad I'd had a big meal the night before and had a nice fat hump.'  
Barbara laughed. 'He's being modest,' she said. 'I saw the message they sent. His essay got a score of ninety-two percent. He came third out of four hundred and sixteen applicants.'  
'Wow,' Narack said.  
'So I take it they admitted you?' Dex asked.  
Krondesh nodded. 'It's a four-year course. The first year is the introduction year. Then there are annual examinations for the next two. Year four is the dissertation year.'  
Barbara said, 'He's already making plans about that.'  
Krondesh leaned forward, his eyes alight with enthusiasm. 'Yeah. I was thinking, there's a long tradition of heroic statuary on Tuchanka. And it's not well-studied at all. But there's also a contrasting artistic tradition of geometrical designs too - if you go to any of the ruins of the old cities, you'll see loads of them. And I was thinking there could be some merit in a comparative study of both schools.'  
'When do you start?' Dex asked.  
'Next week,' Krondesh said.  
'That was fast.'  
The krogan shrugegd. 'I don't need to arrange accomodation on campus and I paid all the course fees up front. If you can do all of that there's an early-start option. Might as well take it if it's there.'  
Narack said, 'Congratulations, I assume?'  
Dex remembered that Narack had met the krogan later than the rest of them. He said, 'Krondesh has longstanding intellectual ambitions. And they've been frustrated by circumstance for quite a long time. So this is really good.'  
Narack said to the krogan, 'So, what do you plan to do with it? The degree, I mean?'  
Krondesh said, 'I have a few ideas. Actually, I'm thinking of training as a teacher.'  
Dex felt his mandibles move. Well, the krogan did seem to like the sound of his own voice, so perhaps there was a link? 'How did you get that idea?' he asked.  
Krondesh said, 'It was all this talk about the situation on Tuchanka. And, dare I say it, also seeing you trying to hang onto your idealism, army boy.'  
Dex blinked. 'What's that got that to do with anything? I thought you reckoned I was a naive idiot?'  
'Well yeah, you are, but perhaps sometimes a bit of naivety's needed. I mean, look at Kat and Karrean. People without a naive bone in their bodies - and look where that led them.'  
Barbara was nodding, a thoughtful look on her face. 'That's a good point,' she said.  
Krondesh said, 'And I got to thinking. Having a degree would be great and all that, but what's the use if you do nothing with it? I wondered if maybe I could do something, you know, for the other krogan. Perhaps it's time to test the theory that education could break the cycle of poverty?'  
Dex said, 'They disinherited you. If you went back to Tuchanka, what would happen?'  
'Who said anything about going back to Tuchanka? There are plenty of krogan here on Omega. Or there's Illium, or even the Citadel for that matter. I can't be the only one with intellectual interests.'  
'So you're sort of planning on founding a krogan academy?' Dex said.  
Krondesh shrugged. 'I have money, I have motivation and I'll have an actual bona fide education soon enough. Why not? I've even got some ideas about running it on a multi-species basis. Perhaps if more of us knew each other, things would be better.'  
'The krogan has big plans,' Narack said.  
Barbara shrugged. 'Why not? It's worth a try.'  
Just then, the waiter arrived with their main courses. Plates were dished out and trays of condiments were positioned. Another round of drinks appeared. Appetising scents of foods wafted across the table. Dex realised his mouth was watering.  
Once everything was positioned, the waiter vanished again.  
Krondesh gave Dex a look. 'So,' he said, 'army boy. That leaves you. We've all talked about what we're doing now. What about you?'  
Dex nodded slowly. 'Actually,' he said, 'I've been toying with an idea.'  
'He's had an idea, has he?' Krondesh said. 'This is going to be entertaining, then.' You could tell that the krogan was relaxed and comfortable; he was snarking.  
'It occurs to me,' Dex said, 'that there's a gap in the market.'  
'There are lots of those,' Krondesh said. 'You find those wherever something might get in the way of the Council governments' trade policies.'  
Barbara said, 'What gap in which market?'  
Dex said, 'Basically, reputable security services.'  
Krondesh cocked his head a bit to one side. 'Go on.'  
Dex said, 'There's no shortage of shitty gangs, corrupt merc groups and two-bit thugs around here. But there don't seem to be much in the way of reliable and honest, professional services. I mean, consider places like schools and hospitals. Here on Omega they definitely do need security, but with things as they are, who would you trust?'  
Krondesh suddenly started laughing. 'Oh dear - this is delicious!'  
'What?' Narack looked confused.  
Krondesh said, 'It appears army boy's decided to set up his own merc company! This is so ironic it's delicious.'  
Dex winced at the word 'merc'. 'I really don't like the m-word,' he said. 'And anyway, that's the wrong image for what I have in mind. I'm thinking things like security guards or risk analysis services. It wouldn't be doing business like slaving or drug smuggling or assassinations.'  
Narack said, 'As a rule, the profit margins on honesty are low.'  
'But they're there,' Dex said. 'What would make this sustainable would be the lack of crazy greed. Look at Kat and Karrean. They wanted to be Number One in everything, they wanted to rule the world - and it led them straight into the hands of the Collectors. Rather, the purpose of this would be providing an acceptable standard of living for the people in it, not climbing to the top of every single pile. And it would also do little things that would make the world a little better. This is concrete, achievable stuff, not mad wild-eyed idealism.'  
Narack said, 'You'd need start-up capital to get something like that going.'  
Dex nodded. 'Well, I do now have a couple of million credits floating around. That will help.'  
The batarian seemed to consider that. Then, he said, 'Are you interested in finding partners, or is this a solo effort?'  
Dex considered that one. 'Having extra startup money would be useful - wait, I just missed something, didn't I?'  
Narack rolled his eyes. 'I'm sort of between jobs right now, and also have a couple of million floating around. I was trying to sound you out on a joint venture.'  
The krogan started laughing again. To Barbara, he said, 'I do love how oblivious this turian can be sometimes!'  
She nodded. 'It's a special skill of his, isn't it?'  
To Narack, Dex said, 'You'd do that? I mean, work under the conditions I just outlined?'  
Narack nodded. 'Also, I think you could benefit from my business skills. No offence - you know what you do. And you do it well. But I also have experience of running and managing big organisations. And a lot of it is going to hinge on finances. And that's never easy or straightforward. Particularly if our human friend is right and the station’s economy is slipping back into recession again.’  
Krondesh said, 'Of course, you two would have one extra advantage.'  
Dex blinked. Business advice from a krogan? 'What's that?'  
'If you stick to ethical business only, you wouldn't have any trouble expanding into Citadel space. Should you want to, I mean.'  
That was a good point. Perhaps, Dex thought, there were fringe benefits to honest conduct. Now that was an idea his old lieutenant would never have been able to understand!  
Narack said to Dex, 'Well? Can we do a deal?'  
Dex considered it. 'All right, why not?'  
'Well,' Krondesh said, 'it looks like we all have plans for the future. Good. Now let's eat.' With that he started digging into his meal.  
It was, Dex reflected, quite predictable that the krogan would want to have the last word.


End file.
